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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 

 
 r
 
 BY THE ELBE 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 BY THE ELBE 
 
 BY 
 
 bAKAH T\TLEK ^w-v-^^o-:^ 
 
 AITHOR OK 'CITOYENNK JAQUELIXK' KTC. 
 
 r^l^kJU^ 
 
 IN THEEE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WA'J'EKLOO PLACE 
 
 1876 
 
 \_AH iiij/tlx itaerved]
 
 /^ 
 
 5700 
 
 TO 
 
 MY FIVE GIRL FKIENDS 
 
 IN AFFECTIONATE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE YOUTHFUL 
 
 COURAGE AND CHEERFULNESS WHICH LIGHTENED 
 
 MANY A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY AND 
 
 QUEER HALTING-PLACE 
 
 604 4 9G 
 
 ENOTSH
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIEST VOLUME 
 
 CHAPTER PAGK 
 
 I. DEAD GOLD FOR LIVING GOLD .... 1 
 
 II. MRS. PENFEATHER's ESTIMATE OF MART . . 21 
 
 III. THE LAST GUEST WELCOME AT THE WARREN . 45 
 
 lY. CHATTER OVER FRIZETTES AND HAIRPINS . . 63 
 
 V. A MAN WHO DESPISED TO BE ENTERTAINED . 79 
 
 VI. MART AND MRS. PENFEATHER SPY THE LAND AT 
 
 SANDFORD . . . . . . .100 
 
 VU. THE woman's SIDE OF THE QUESTION . . I'il 
 
 VIII. THE HOUSEKEEPER OF THE MANAGER OF THE 
 SECRET WORKS, AND THE MANAGER IN HIS OWN 
 PERSON 139 
 
 IX. IN THE BURGERWIESE . . . . .161 
 
 X. HOW FRA AND LTD SPENT THEIR TIME . .ITS 
 
 XI. WHOM MARY MEETS SCOUTING THE VERONESES 
 
 AND STUDYING THE ALBRECHT DURERS . .199 
 
 XII. THE BARONESS GISELA AND HER COUSIN THE 
 
 MAD GRAF ....... 220
 
 VIU 
 
 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 CHArXKK PAG 
 
 XIII. WHOM MART WATCHES AT A SMOKING CONCERT . 23 
 
 XIV. THE MOTLEY INGREDIENTS OF A PLEASURE PARTY 25 
 XV. ON THE ELBE ....... 26 
 
 XVI. THE BASTEI ....... 27 
 
 XVII. THE RULING PASSION ..... 29 
 
 XVIII. THE KDHSTALL 30 
 
 XIX. WHAT WAS OWING TO A DEACONESS . . . .32:
 
 BY THE ELBE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DEAD GOLD FOR LIVING GOLD. 
 
 • If it were only hard, cold metal,' said Marj- 
 Carteret, wistfully, pulling down and drawing 
 throush her finofers one of the lonf^ clusters of the 
 jrellow flowers of the laburnum which hung all 
 round her, making the place glorious. 
 
 Slie was standing in a laburnum avenue, which 
 ed from an old red house, by a rough break of 
 urze and gorse, right into a dark pine wood and 
 I brown and purple moor tliat had only a cart 
 -rack runninn; through them. 
 
 The avenue did not show always to the same 
 idvantage ; laburnums are not graceful, not to say 
 itately, among ornamental trees, and they get 
 ;craggy with age, while their very floweriness 
 oads them for the greater part (^f the year with 
 )rown or ashen-coloured pods, whicli impair the 
 int of their otherwise somewhat scanty and patchy 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 foliage. But, for ten days or so, they are glorious 
 — with that tempered richness of nature which is 
 never oppressive — beyond anything in garden or 
 field, unless it be those ' broomy braes of June,' 
 famed in Scotch song. 
 
 The planter of this laburnum avenue had been 
 so thriftlessly enamoured of the brief effect, as 
 to sacrifice for it appearances, for the remaining 
 weeks and months of the year. To do him jus- 
 tice, he had the additional temptation of the 
 striking contrast offered by the sunny splendour 
 of the laburnum in May, to the dark background 
 of firwood and moorland into which it was shaded 
 off by the furze and gorse thickets. 
 
 The young woman who now moralised over 
 the senseless laburnimi keenly appreciated both 
 the liofht and the Q;loom, with their artistic balan- 
 cing ; and yet she was guilty of the very mercenary 
 reflection which has been recorded. 
 
 In spite of it there was no mean closeness in' 
 Mary Carteret's mouth, or rigid narrowness in her 
 forehead, or elongated claw-like type in her hands, 
 to indicate her, betimes, a miser ; at four and 
 twenty years of age, in the first prime of woman- 
 hood, her comeliness w^as remarkable for its breadth 
 and openness. She had a wide forehead, eyes set 
 well apart, a nose slightly too broad for symmetry, 
 and a mouth whose red flexible lips were not 
 small. Her very wealth of healthy, slightly tanned 
 colour, reddening the pale, creamy whiteness of
 
 BY THE ELBE. 3 
 
 i) 
 
 the rest of the skin, which it invaded, with the 
 abundance and nut-Hke gloss and tint of her twist- 
 ed brown hair, under her flapping Leghorn hat, 
 were all opposed to niggardliness of constitution 
 and temperament. Her stature, as she stood there 
 in her Holland gown, was not low, her gait was 
 not wavering or crafty, far less cringing. There 
 appeared to be nothing stunted or starved about 
 the woman, not even anything of the dispropor- 
 tions that so often meet the view. She had some- 
 how attained to her full height, however tender or 
 raw the structure might otherwise be, in mind and 
 body. Although she w^as a lady by descent and 
 education — so perfectly a lady that her ladyhood 
 was innate and unconscious — a certain seriousness, 
 independence, and vigour in her air, opposed to 
 the restrictions and helplessness of many of her 
 class, reminded an observer of a good and true, 
 brave and earnest peasant woman. 
 
 Still, Mary Carteret lamented tliat the balmy, 
 fugitive grace of the flower in her hand could not 
 be changed into common rattling coin of tlic 
 realm. But she wished it in the bitterness of her 
 heart, and out of very love for the flowers and 
 trees and moor — nay, the earth on which she 
 stood. 
 
 For want of a little of that money wliicli hosts 
 of men, his social, intellectual, and moral inferiors, 
 seemed to earn wdthout much difficulty, Mary's 
 father was on the eve of bidding a long farewell 
 
 B 2
 
 4 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 to the place which was his, and had been his fore- 
 fathers', for more generations than even he could 
 stay to count, and every stone of which was dear 
 to him, with a regard half-filial, half-sacred, akin 
 to that which the ancient Jew felt for his holy city 
 Jerusalem, 
 
 It ii-ked Mary with a sore irksomeness, as well 
 as a resentful indignation and shame, that she 
 could do nothing to prevent the sacrifice. For she 
 was one of the unreasonable women who have ex- 
 isted in all generations and are somewhat clamor- 
 ously conspicuous in the present, that cannot stand 
 aside to be cared for and to sufier in silence, as 
 their proper part in fiimily and social calamity. 
 
 She was young, strong, eager, indefatigable ; 
 even without family disaster she would have 
 thirsted to be up and doing some of God's work 
 in this world, k^he could not have been content 
 with being solely ornamental in a time of pros- 
 perity ; so, sim])ly to lend a pensive charm to 
 adversity was a serious trial to her. 
 
 Perhaps she would have fallen more easily into 
 her position, and borne it better, had her brothers 
 played their parts gallanth^, had there not been, to 
 her mother's inexhaustible regret, certain pecu- 
 liarities in Mary's education. As it was, with 
 Eegy and Tom of no earthly use in the strait — nay, 
 serving as proximate causes of it, by their heavy 
 college expenses, their failures at the bar and in 
 taking orders, and as sources of draining cost
 
 BY THE ELBE. 5 
 
 to this day away out in Australia and Canada — 
 Mary was conscious of a responsibility increased 
 tenfold, while she writhed under her inadequacy 
 to the situation. 
 
 After all, what was so great a trial to Mary 
 and her father, might not have struck the world 
 at larf?e, as an unmino-led evil which did not afford 
 a hope — save that it was so remote tliat it ceased 
 to be a hope — of restitution. Even Mrs. Carteret 
 only felt the blow intensely for a time, when the 
 misery, happily for herself and her friends, was 
 diverted into a tliousand comparatively shallow 
 channels — as the waters of some ijreat river dis- 
 perse by many moutlis into the sea — through the 
 multitude of details and minor anxieties which 
 the oreat misfortune orig-inated ; while to Fra and 
 Lyd, Mary's younger sisters, it was no bane but a 
 boon. 
 
 It was onlv to exchangee embaiTassments at 
 home for retrenchments abroad ; only to quit a 
 tumble-down ancient house, never at its best great 
 or pretentious. But long before a brick of it was 
 laid, the Carterets had been one of the three 
 or four families — the names of which were still to 
 be met Avith in county liistory, and tliat liad 
 shared between tliem the shire. And the last was 
 now to relinquish its remnant of inlluence, and 
 disappear from the parish register of the day, 
 leaving every mossy tree, tottering park wall, 
 and stagnant ditch boundary, as well as every
 
 6 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 centre of maniifactiiring enterprise and modern 
 improvement to the trust of a race of new- 
 comers. 
 
 The middle-aged squire of ' The Warren ' was 
 not selhng the acres that were left him. These 
 remained the only provision for his wife's annuity 
 and his daughters' doweries, as well as the bur- 
 dened succession of his eldest son. He was merelv 
 letting the home farm to save it from utter im- 
 poverishment, in consequence of his inability to 
 drain and manure, trench and top-dress, what he 
 had retained in his own hands, and at the same 
 time to keep up the most frugal establishment that 
 a poor, far-descended country squire could reduce 
 himself to, without his wife and daughters bearino; 
 
 ' CO 
 
 testimony to his sin against his fomily and his 
 order, in this country of commercial wealth, 
 luxurious Uving, and ostentatious pretension. 
 
 Like Mary, in desiring the impossible change 
 of the spotless laburnum blossoms into guineas, 
 soiled with the cleaving touch of many hands, it 
 was in disinterested consideration for the old 
 family place, as well as for his children, that Mr. 
 Carteret prepared to alienate himself for life from 
 wdiat, next to Mary, was the light of his eyes and 
 the joy of his heart. 
 
 At the same time, it was only the compara- 
 tively blank fields and moor that he let. He was 
 saved the torture of transferring the house, with its 
 human associations and memory-haunted rooms,
 
 BY THE ELBE. i 
 
 to any occupants less intelligent and respectful than 
 the old gardener and his wife, who were to occupy 
 the lower flat, to air and warm what was already 
 mouldy and chill, and to keep together and care 
 for the antique and nearly worn-out furniture. It 
 was long since a modern library table or new 
 piano had come to ' The Warren,' on which Mrs. 
 Carteret persisted on setting store in a money 
 sense, but which the Squire in his heart knew was 
 of little intrinsic value except to its owners. 
 
 In fact, the house was far too old-fashioned and 
 inconvenient, while it did not in itself belong 
 to so remote a period as to be venerable, and 
 therefore romantic, to figure as a desirable resi- 
 dence for a tenant even in the catalo«:ue of a land- 
 
 D 
 
 agent. 
 
 Yet it is often to these stuffy, shabby, out-of- 
 date dwellings, with their grounds heinously stiff 
 or wildly overgrown, which a man may have oc- 
 cupied and unaccountably })rided himself on for 
 the better part of his life, and which he has been 
 accustomed to look upon as one with his people — 
 palpitating with their life, stirred by their breath — 
 since the reign of the first Georges or Queen Anne 
 at least, that wilful human affections cling till the 
 heart-strino;s crack in an enforced severance. 
 
 Mary Carteret was employing some of the over- 
 abundance of leisure, against which she rebelled, 
 to walk all over the old place again, and take 
 from numerous favourite points the last fond looks,
 
 8 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 the recollection of which she was never with her 
 own consent to part from. 
 
 She was alone ; for nobody wonld have sym- 
 pathised with her save her father. In this case 
 the sympathy was keen and deep ; while, as Mary 
 herself humbly confessed, the anguish of the man, 
 with his longer date of possession and his more 
 entire proprietorship, was more poignant. It was 
 also mingled with bitter self-reproach for the 
 loss of opportunities which, as they had never 
 come to Mary, she could not mourn over. The 
 two — father and daughter — who had much in 
 common, and had been accustomed to share their 
 interests, instinctively avoided each other in the 
 spending of those lastdnys, and in the entertaining 
 of those last regards which were all that were left 
 them, and with respect to which they felt justly 
 that here communion would only be the enhance- 
 ment of sorrow. Mary was shy of intruding on 
 her father's regrets, for she had an intuitive com- 
 prehension that, acute and severe as were her own, 
 there was all the difference, between her lamenta- 
 tion and his, that there can be between a yoimg, 
 fearless, buoyant woman, who has life and hope 
 before her, and an elderly and broken-down man, 
 who has little to expect from this world, and who 
 is convinced tliat he is all but done with it. 
 
 Mary had got over the earliest self-confi- 
 dent, somewhat uncharitable conclusion to which 
 she had been driven — ' Oh, if I had been
 
 BY THE ELBE. 9 
 
 Eegy or Tom, I would have prevented this ; I 
 would have stood in the breach ; I would have 
 so demeaned myself at Cambridge and Oxford, 
 reading law and divinity, that we — that papa — 
 should never have been compelled to quit the 
 dear old Warren, and c^o abroad to veo-etate or 
 rust for the rest of his days, though papa is too 
 manly and good to do that ; but small thanks to 
 the boys for it.' Mary had come to the more 
 becoming and subdued frame of mind, of con- 
 sidering that wliat was past was over. Where was 
 tlie good of bearing a grudge against one's own, 
 and one's younger brothers, by whose side Mary 
 had always felt well advanced in sobriety and 
 years ? Poor Regy and Tom would be sorry for 
 the moment — bootless as the sorrow would be, and 
 speedily effaced by the next occupation or amuse- 
 ment which fell in the lads' way — when they heard 
 in their far-away, wide-apart shanties, that life 
 had come to an exodus at the Warren. 
 
 Mary was likewise saved from that curious 
 baffling by commonplace contradictions and im- 
 pertinent interruptions — some of them with a 
 mockingly ludicrous side — which so often perplex 
 and mortify men and women, when tliey have 
 made, as they are prone to do, a preconceived, while 
 perfectly lionest, programme of sentiment as Avell 
 as of situation. 
 
 Mary was suffered, even by her own conscience 
 — for the family preparations for departure were all
 
 10 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 completed betimes, and Mrs. Carteret permitted 
 no interference with her arrangements, to loiter 
 and linger over saying good-bye to the iiome of 
 her predecessors, and her own home hitherto. 
 
 No obtrusive friend by habit, though there 
 were necessarily many such, no late acquaintance 
 intruded to distract Mary's mind and claim her 
 attention. Not even a rush of bewildering jarring 
 recollections, utterly foreign to present circum- 
 stances, or of tyrannical, premature considerations 
 borrowed from the future, and already involving 
 much of the violent change that the future would 
 bring, interfered with Mary's parting strolls and 
 wistful gaze, in this direction or in that. She was 
 almost as quiet, engrossed, and touched as she had 
 intended to be — which is saying a good deal. It 
 was not quite the same as she had anticipated, of 
 course ; notliino; is altoo;ether so. This flower 
 she had counted on was not in blossom ; that bird 
 was not in tune ; the terrier Eoss barked out of 
 season ; the very absence of her father was a great 
 disturbing experience : still the reality was as near 
 to imagination as could reasonably be looked for, 
 and there was some soothing? influence in the cor- 
 respondence. 
 
 Mary had walked down the laburnum avenue, 
 as she had projected. She was glad, not sorry, that 
 she did so, as the early summer and the trees 
 were in their perfection, on a changeable but sweet 
 May day, when there were dappled clouds soften-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 11 
 
 ing, but not shading, the wonderful golden arbours 
 resounding with mellow song of thrush and black- 
 bird, shrill piping of finch and linnet, and blithe 
 titter of sparrow, through which she took her slow 
 way. What other gold of time, and talents, and 
 heart's content, might she not have spent, or 
 spared, or prodigally wasted, before that living 
 gold again dropped lovingly on the brown head, 
 which she bared to feel it ? A pattering, passing- 
 shower fell, and beliold the gold was shining and 
 glittering in the returning sunshine, as if fresh 
 from God's own mint of creation. 
 
 Mary went on, gathering in her skirts, and 
 threading easily the prickly labyrinth beyond, 
 which had been a grievance to her mother, and 
 which Mrs. Carteret had thought might have had 
 its reward, had it led to any place that she 
 visited less seldom than the moor. Yet the moor 
 was not desolate to Mary ; the onlv thino^ desolate 
 in it, by a paradox, was the old keeper's cottage, 
 still inhabited by his widow, Avith its wreath of dim 
 blue smoke rising and hovering over the mass of 
 green. The broom and gorse, though in blossom, 
 looked iiiint and flavourless so far as colour was 
 concerned, with their sprinkling of pale gold over 
 their russet and dark green, after the blaze of the 
 laburnum ; but they rested the eyes, and proved a 
 sliding scale to the gloom of the wood. Not that 
 the trees were all sombre, though they were prin- 
 cipally firs ; there were gay green glades of which
 
 12 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Mary knew, beyond tlie path, where tliere were 
 ancient birches, beeches, and oaks, hannts of owls, 
 starlings, and tom-tits. There were plenty of huge 
 apple-green, straw-coloured, and umber-brown 
 brackens ; tliere were patches of heather and red 
 ling in the wood, as well as on the outskirts of 
 the moor. There had been abundance of roe- 
 deer, as well as pheasants and partridges, once on 
 a day, though not in Mary's time. 
 
 She could remember gay picnics there, when 
 the boys were still at home, and before they had 
 lost their promise, when they brought college 
 chums to share their vacation, and when the 
 country houses in the rather thinly-populated 
 neighbourhood round, happened to have their 
 full complement of girl inmates. Mary used to 
 speed busily to and from the wood and moor and 
 the house, by the laburnum avenue, many times, 
 in the pleasant preparation for these feasts, and 
 before the shooting parties, in whose honour and 
 for whose refreshment they were inaugurated, 
 came up to profit by them. 
 
 These rites and ceremonies were always under 
 her mother's punctilious supervision ; Mary was 
 never allowed to introduce any departure from 
 rule, any novelty of freedom or simplicity, which 
 mio;ht have struck her as more belitting the occa- 
 sion. And the boys had called her an old woman 
 always, while she had certainly felt, even in her 
 teens, like a maiden aunt at least beside her
 
 BY THE ELBE. 13 
 
 brothers. Mary had enjoyed the picnics, neverthe- 
 less, in her own way, and she looked back upon 
 the enjoyment tenderly, as has been shown. 
 
 Mary came round from the wood by crossing 
 a field bordered with blackberries, now hlac- 
 budded and shelly-white with blossom, and get- 
 tino; into the short straio;ht avenue of Eno;lish elms 
 and ash trees, unfurnished with a lodge, or even 
 with a gate, which led directly to the house. She 
 went first round to the gardens, which were a 
 characteristic feature of the Warren. They were 
 old flower and vegetable gardens, somewhat faded 
 and dim, like everything else about the place. 
 White roses and white raspberries predominated 
 over red. There seemed a certain colourlessness 
 and homeliness of fragrance in the jumble of dusky 
 carnation, wan lily, and purple-blue convolvulus, 
 with sharp lavender and still more pungent rose- 
 mary — after the flaming scarlet and yellow,blue and 
 purple riband borders, softened by whole columns 
 of neutral-tinted, statuesque house-leeks, with the 
 mellow heliotropes and verbenas of modern gardens. 
 
 But the Warren gardens were very sweet and 
 delicate, with an unapproachable grace to Mary, 
 and not the least charm was the broad OTass walks 
 which Mrs. Carteret regarded as an unmitigated 
 nuisance, and which would have been snares of 
 damp after wet weather, had not the gardens 
 themselves hung, like those of Babylon, on a ter- 
 raced slope, at the foot of which ran a clear little
 
 14 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 stream, once held extremely convenient to the 
 gardener. This stream, leaving the garden, tra- 
 versed a tiny dell among holhes and willows, 
 where there were the earliest primroses, and 
 where the brook hme was to be found larger 
 and bluer than in any other spot that Mary had dis- 
 covered in the country. She suspected the wild 
 flowers might wither and rot now unmolested, for 
 the old gardener and his wife would not care to 
 pull them, though they might still gather and 
 store in drawers and cupboards, till they fell to 
 fragrant dust, the sweet violets. The last grew as 
 they had grown when Mary, a child, filled her 
 lap full of them, moist with dew, many a morning, 
 in the long rows beside the sunny wall, where the 
 rosy-red and death-white stock grew next them, 
 and just before the wall made the nook which 
 sheltered the great bed of lily of the valley. 
 
 Mary pursued her wanderings to the blossom- 
 ing orchard and to the paddock devoted to the 
 rearing of pheasants in hen-coops, with a sentry- 
 box in the middle for the keeper, who watched 
 for and drove off the hawks hovering over their 
 prey. The paddock was still an animated scene, 
 with its broods of young birds speckled like ripe 
 field peas, scurrying here and there. But the 
 kennels beyond had been for some time deserted, 
 save by the old house dog ' Worry,' which strained 
 his chain to reach Mary, and lick her hand as 
 his final homage.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 15 
 
 At last she came in front of the house, and 
 stood on the httle lawn, and by the familiar scene 
 close at hand, to imprint a version of it on her 
 brain, as Mary Tudor Avould have had Calais 
 written on her heart. Nothinof of a house to im- 
 partial and yet ignorant observers, looking quite 
 small, though Mary was aware it managed to con- 
 ceal marvels of accommodation — such as the 
 accommodation was. A red house, faced with 
 crey, rising into a three-cornered peak, crowned 
 with three urns rather than pinnacles, and pierced 
 by one round eye of a window. Beneath, on a 
 stone let in for the purpose, the engraved initial 
 letters ' H. C and ' C. B.,' for Harry Cartaret 
 and Carola Bennet, the husband and wife stand- 
 ing midway among Mary's progenitors, and 
 under whose still moderately prosperous and hope- 
 ful auspices the foundation-stone had been laid, 
 and the roof-tree about to be forsaken added, at 
 the date recorded, 1703. 
 
 The little lawn was very small, and was so 
 encumbered by great bushes and trees, altogether 
 out of proportion to its size, that there was no 
 more than a clear opening for the rent weather- 
 stained stone sun-dial which stood opposite the 
 entrance. There were a bristling and a droop- 
 ing pine, recent intruders on the crowded oval 
 sward. But the great permanent obstructions 
 were a huge old walnut and a wild cherry tree
 
 16 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 whicli Mary would not have missed for the 
 world. 
 
 Mary stepped indoors like the ghost of herself 
 on an extraordinary errand, did not pause in the 
 little hall, with its squares of black and white 
 marble, its native stags' horns, and its tiny round 
 closet for gun-cases, but proceeded through 
 the low-roofed, thick-walled rooms in turn. 
 
 The dining-room, on the ground floor, was a 
 dark room even on a May day, and had Aviudow 
 recesses to side windows capable of holding a 
 single isolated chair with its occupant. 
 
 There was not one spacious staircase, but 
 several httle winding stairs leadino- in the first 
 place to narrow winding lobbies, and ultimately 
 to whole suites of small bedrooms, some of whicli 
 Mary never remembered to have seen occupied. 
 They were consecrated to ancient inhabitants, and 
 continued to bear names long out of the world, save 
 on mouldering gravestones. Here was the ' Gover- 
 nor's room,' when the ' Governor ' was no slan^ 
 term, but was applied in sober earnest to a Carteret 
 who had pushed his fortunes abroad, played 
 the king in some West Indian island, and been 
 content to return and own a seat at his brother's 
 or his nephew's hospitable table. It was one 
 of the best bachelors' rooms in the family house, 
 though with hardly less limitation than the six 
 feet of space in the family vault. And this was
 
 BY THE ELBE. 17 
 
 ' Lady Lucy's room,' a memorial that a Carteret, 
 within a century and a half, had wedded an carl's 
 daughter, and brought her home to leave her 
 mark on the habitation. 
 
 Mary turned the keys in the doors of these 
 deserted rooms, Mrs. Carteret in her spirit of 
 conservatism and well-bred housewifery, so took 
 order that while the rooms were aked and cared 
 for, their original contents remahied undisturbed. 
 Mary could handle gingerly Lady Lucy's pamted 
 workbasket with her ladyship's last piece of 
 tambour work — the tambour needle rusted in its 
 stitch lying in it. She could draw out the special 
 drawer in the Governor's chest which contained his 
 official suit, knee breeches and all, and his state 
 vest of yellow and white satin. These garments, 
 in spite of Mrs. Carteret's supremacy and ubiquity, 
 had not escaped sacrilege. Mary could recall acting 
 charades in her mother's absence, when Regy and 
 Tom had defied all ])recedent, and pulled out the 
 Governor's small clothes and his very, state 
 vest to serve their ends and every appropriate 
 purpose to which the ancient garments could be 
 turned. 
 
 The drawing-room, like the other living-rooms, 
 held only a few traces of former generations among 
 the dominant necessaries of life to the present pro- 
 prietors ; but growing scarcity of means had kept 
 the last witliin bounds, and even rendered their 
 goods ancient in succession. As has been said, 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret, who in lier conservatism yet loved all 
 conventional improvements, Lad to deny herself 
 every acquisition with mysterious title of ' What- 
 not ' or ' Davenport ;' while tlie girls still used 
 their mother's grand piano, and their piles of music 
 were, as Fra complained indignantly, largely made 
 up of school pieces. How could they help it, when it 
 took their allowances of pocket-money — which, as 
 their motlier told them, had kept her in her maiden 
 days, and all their excellent aunts on the mother's 
 side, in gowns and bonnets — to buy gloves and 
 ribands ? As for Mr. Carteret's books and news- 
 papers, which had once reflected impartially every 
 ijhade of political opinion, and of enterprise of ac- 
 credited editor, and author of magazine and pam- 
 phlet, and which had served to litter both library 
 and drawing-room — these too had dwindled down 
 to the ' Times ' and the ' Quarterly.' 
 
 Thus there remained resting places for speci- 
 mens of the luxury and taste of individuals wdio 
 liad died, most of them, before Mrs. Carteret was 
 born. 
 
 There was a case of miniatures, representing 
 languishing ladies w^ith powder in their hair, and 
 fierce gentleinen Avith ruffles round their tapering 
 hands, on a gilt ground in one frame, and very 
 fe\v- of the oritjinals of which even Mr. Carteret 
 could name. 
 
 There was a cup set in silver with the date 
 153G.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 19 
 
 There was an inlaid cabinet, introduced there 
 when such cabinets were ordinary movable cup- 
 boards, and when there was no such thing as a 
 curiosity shop, with its exorbitant prices, answering 
 to the rai^e for mundane relics. 
 
 There Avere china muo-s, which if Mr. Carteret 
 had been foreseeing, he would have sent up to one 
 of Christie and Hanson's sales, and sold before 
 the china mania had suddenly expired like othei' 
 manias. 
 
 There were hand screens, in an elegant lack-a- 
 daisical style, proofs of the feebly graceful accom- 
 plishments of earlier daughters of the house ; and 
 there was still lying among books, of a different 
 and mucli more sober and work-a-day letter and 
 spirit, a copy of ' Lallah Eookh ' in costly binding, 
 which had belonged to the maiden aunt from 
 whom, and not from his father, Mr. Carteret had 
 inherited the Warren. 
 
 Side by side with these vestiges of the past, 
 were Mrs, Carteret's carefully cherished wed- 
 ding gifts of silver epergne, rather rickety, her 
 china vases — Sevres instead of Chelsea — her hand- 
 screens and books. 
 
 Mr. Carteret's watercolour sketches, taken 
 when he was a young man and had leisure and 
 heart for such pursuits, and his books, were there, 
 jostling Mary's books, bracket-bag and portfolio. 
 And there was still room for Fra and L3^d's 
 heterogeneous possessions, ranging from fitfully 
 
 c 2
 
 20 BY THE ELEE. 
 
 attended to, dropsical fern cnses, to nets for the 
 last lawn game to be played on a lawn of several 
 acres in extent, and shorn bare of its very daisies. 
 Mary saw tliem all at a glance ; and then she 
 tried, throngli a gathering mist before her eyes, to 
 see each thing separately. Failing in that attempt, 
 she went upstairs and stood at her own little room 
 window, and said to herself, ' Now, I have looked 
 at it all deliberately for the first and last time. I 
 cannot look at each separate particle of the dust 
 tliat is dear to papa and me, and carry away the 
 remembrance of every atom ; though I should like 
 to do that. I will be reasonable, and go out in 
 peace.'
 
 BY THE ELBE. 21 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MRS. PEXFEATHER'S ESTIMATE OF MARY. 
 
 ' My dear, you do not know the responsibility, and, 
 I may say, the trial, involved in having one of the 
 best of husbands, and dear good children. IsTo 
 doubt it is hard to lose a husband as you have lost 
 yours, and to be not only a widow, but childless ; 
 still I do not think it is heartless to hold that 
 there are compensations for the greatest depriva- 
 tions. I can assure you, Celia, that with all the 
 respect and regard in the world for Mr. Carteret, and 
 with all a mother's — I hope not a careless mother's 
 — feelings for my bo3^s and girls, that they often 
 worry me almost beyond bearing. Of course, I 
 should not confess it to everybody, only to an old 
 friend like you, who can sympathise with my 
 troubles.' 
 
 The speaker was Mrs. Carteret, and she made 
 the amazingly egotistical and paradoxical state- 
 ment in perfectly good faith. The hstener was 
 Mrs. Penfeather, and she was saying to herself, ' A 
 widow and childless that can sympathise with the 
 troubles of a wife who possesses the best of 1ms-
 
 22 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 bands, and is the mother of good children — what 
 a marvel she must think me ! Wiiat conld I have 
 done in our nonage to warrant so extrava^rant an 
 opinion ? ' 
 
 Mrs. Carteret was a formal, neat little woman, 
 in her chocolate moire, with her blue velvet and 
 Honiton lace headdress. The costume was some- 
 what costly to begin with, but in her case it was 
 lasting. She did not care to vary her fashion ; and 
 she was to be seen dressed for dinner in that grave 
 suitable strain to the utmost term of existence of 
 a moire or of Honiton lace ; then perhaps the 
 chocolate w^ould be replaced by an olive green 
 gown of a similar fabric, capped by the Honiton 
 lace, relieved by lilac or pink velvet. 
 
 She was so formal and so neat in her manners 
 and habits, that she seriously impaired her un- 
 doubted claims as a woman of good birth and 
 breeding. Strangers had been heard to question 
 whether Mrs. Carteret had not risen from the 
 ranks of trade at least — she Avas so burdened with 
 punctiliousness — and to remark that there was a 
 faint reflection of the milliner's block in her 
 invariably umruflled and elegant plumes. But the 
 result w^as caused by the nature of the woman, 
 not by any conscious inferiority of origin or educa- 
 tion. 
 
 She retained considerable remnants of a bright 
 eyed, small featured, clear coloured prettiness ; 
 though those were marred by the contracted
 
 CY THE ELBE. 2o 
 
 character of the face, which was more and more 
 observable as years were pinching it in their turn, 
 by tlie frettingly anxious knit of the brows and 
 obstinate twist of the mouth, which had become 
 the settled position of the features. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather had not been so handsome as 
 her friend at starting, and foreign climates and ill- 
 health had rendered her emaciated to the bone 
 and bleached to pallor. Still the exaggerated 
 framework of the angular figure, in its easy out- 
 line — so far as it depended on drapery, and the 
 lividness of the face, where a certain tried self- 
 possession and serene repose prevailed, were not 
 without the power of pleasing. 
 
 Tiie Carterets had not entirely escaped from 
 social aggravations as the time for their depar- 
 ture from ' The Warren ' drew near : though Mrs. 
 Carteret, finding her liusband inflexible, had done 
 wliat she could to brinfi; down to a minimum the 
 round of farewell dinners ; and Mr. Carteret had 
 doggedly refused becoming the principal party to 
 any private or public demonstration, in whatever 
 iiijht it mio;ht f^reet him, whether as Justice of 
 Peace and squire, or man and brother. 
 
 'Why should they feast and bespatter me ^vith 
 compliments and gifts?' he asked, in his liasty, 
 abrupt way. ' Let tlieni keep them for a better 
 man. I liave not been able to check, in my own 
 family, tendencies which, in their coarse, brutal 
 fruit — though with far more excuse for the rank
 
 24 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 growtli, I condemned on the bench. I have not 
 been able to do what I miijlit as a landlord ; 
 my tenants, servants, and neighbours have all suf- 
 fered in different degrees by my incapacity. I am 
 relinquishing perforce the estate to which I was 
 called, as a bad job so far as I am concerned ; if I 
 had been a wiser and a better man I miQ;ht have 
 retained it. It would be a gross imposition and 
 humbug to tax the country to furnish me with 
 puffs and presents.' 
 
 But, ^vithin the last week, an old friend and 
 schoolfellow of Mrs. Carteret's came back to 
 England, after a quarter of a century's absence, 
 without her husl)and — a naval officer who had 
 been drowned by the accidental capsizing of a 
 boat when his frigate lay off the African coast — 
 or her brother — a veteran high up in the East 
 India Company's service, to whom she had gone 
 after her widowhood, and with whom slie had 
 stayed, presiding over his household, till the re- 
 bellion broke out and he perished, while she was 
 saved by a hairbreadth escape. 
 
 Later she had resided, to suit her health and 
 finances, in cheap, quiet quarters in Italy and 
 Southern France and German v. At last she had 
 returned to England, feeling so much of a stranger 
 and so destitute of near ties, that slic had forced 
 herself by an effort to recall her favourite -school- 
 fellow, whom she had been wont to visit for 
 months at a time after the two young ladies w^ere
 
 BY THE ELBE. 25 
 
 released from school, and whose bridesmaid slie 
 had been when Mrs. Carteret had married, three 
 or four years before Mrs. Penfeather. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather laid hold of this slender link 
 to her former world, requested to be reinstated in 
 an intercourse which had died a natural death 
 when Mary Carteret was in long clotlies, and 
 offered, if it were convenient, to pay another visit, 
 after so wide a gap, to ' The Warren.' 
 
 The time was highly inconvenient ; but one of 
 Mrs. Carteret's sterling qualities was constancy, 
 and constancy of a literal, one-ideaed sort. She 
 was ready to welcome her old friend, and extend 
 to her the warmth of a friend's house while Mrs. 
 Carteret had an English house to offer, at whatever 
 sacrifice of her own plans and views. 
 
 It was Mrs. Penfeather's regret and annoy- 
 ance at havino; been the unwittino; means of 
 placing herself and otliers in an awkward position, 
 and her determination of purpose, which produced a 
 modification in the arrangements. Mrs. Penfeather 
 lodj^ed at the little school-house in the neiorhbour- 
 ing village of Cleve, and only walked up to dinner 
 at ' The Warren,' in place of being a resident 
 in the house. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather had now come to dinner, and 
 was being of what use she could to her hostess. 
 She was sitting in her best black silk and Indian 
 shawl to show that she treated the occasion with due 
 honour. She was probably diverting Mrs, Carteret's
 
 2G BT THE ELBE. 
 
 mind from those cares of which she complained, 
 or at least lessening their burden by becoming 
 their reci^Dient, even while Mrs. Penfeather en- 
 tered her private protest of the inequality which 
 had been established between the women, and 
 therefore of her incapacity to fill again, as satis- 
 factorily as formerly, the long vacated post of her 
 friend's confidante. 
 
 As for Mrs. Carteret, she was not disturbed by 
 any doubts of Mrs. Penfeather's comprehension of 
 and concern for her trials. She was one of those 
 ^vomen whose private experiences bulk so largely 
 in their minds, that the motes in their own eyes 
 monopolise the faculties of vision, and they cannot 
 so much as see the beams barrino; their neio-hbours' 
 eyes. 
 
 ' But surely my god-daughter Mary is a great 
 comfort to you,' said Mrs. Penfeather, feehng that 
 she had come from the wilderness, and out of the 
 depths, to encourage the friend whose lines had 
 been cast in pleasant places all these fateful years. 
 
 ' Ah ! well, it was just about Mary that I was 
 going to consult you, Celia. We shall always be 
 Celia and Panny to each other, shall we not ? ' 
 asked Mrs. Carteret, affectionately. She was a 
 woman of strong, though somewhat undisciphned 
 and unbalanced affections ; and yet discipline was 
 the foundation of her life. 
 
 ' I think we shall,' returned Mrs. Penfeather, 
 with composed and still sufficing assurance.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 27 
 
 Then Mrs. Carteret drew a sigh of superior 
 and harassed wisdom. 'Mary is unlike the gene- 
 rahty of girls, unlike what I was at her age. I 
 do not quite know wdiat to make of her, and I do 
 not rehsh such puzzles.' 
 
 ' I am afraid you cannot prevent them, Fanny,' 
 said Mrs. Penfeather. 
 
 ' I never see them turn out well,' continued 
 Mrs. Carteret, with involuntary sharpness, from 
 the sharp timbre that had crept into her always 
 thin voice ; ' one does not wish a girl to be a 
 prodigy, not to say an oddity. It may answer with 
 a boy, and it might have pleased Mr. Carteret if 
 our poor boys had been prodigies,' she added, 
 with an impatient betrayal of the sorest spot in 
 her heart, ' but it never suits with a girl.' 
 
 ' In what way is Mary a prodigy, may I ask ? ' 
 enquired Mrs. Penfeather. 
 
 ' Oil ! I don't blame Mary herself,' exclaimed 
 Mrs. Carteret, going olf instantly in another direc- 
 tion ; ' please don't misunderstand my words,' -svitli 
 a suspicion of irritability whicli reminded Mrs. 
 Penfeather of the days when Panny Lucas had 
 been the best behaved and at the same time the 
 touchiest girl in Ash Lodeje School. ' It is all 
 her father's doiner, and it is because he would 
 bring her forward, and have her with him when 
 she was a mere baby of a girl ; you know, Celia, 
 how Avilfiil as well as how ^ood Mr. Carteret 
 is, and what hobbies he rides. Mary was the
 
 28 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 first child in the family, so lie would spoil her 
 as far as he could, by briuging her forward and 
 making a companion of her even after Eegy and 
 Tom were born and grown into fine little fellows 
 Avho might have served his purpose. The conse- 
 quence is that Mary has grown up, not a boisterous 
 bouncing tomboy — I flatter myself that could not 
 have happened with my daughter while I was 
 with her — but not without a kind of rude hardi- 
 ness — I cannot call it anything else — and self- 
 reliance, and full of opinions and notions on 
 subjects that other girls neither know nor care 
 about. I am in perfect horror for her taking up 
 some women's rights question, or proposing to 
 enter on a career as they call it. It must be of 
 trade now, as her lather has no longer funds to 
 qualify her for a profession, or to pay her elec- 
 tioneering expenses, if women ever be permitted 
 to enter Parliament,' finished Mrs. Carteret with 
 a dash of sarcasm. 
 
 ' I hope you are overestimating the dangers.' 
 Her companion sought to soothe the irate and 
 alarmed lady, while Mrs. Penfeather was going 
 back in her disengaged mind into the shadowy 
 past, and trying to draw from it any indications or 
 explanations of the present state of aflairs. 
 
 ' Mr. Carteret was not wilful, though he had a 
 mind of his own and could stand to it, when I 
 knew him,' reflected the umpire, ' and it was not 
 he who was one-ideaed, but Fanny. At that time
 
 BY THE ELBE. 29 
 
 he was all iu all with her, tlioiigh there was a 
 dawning rival to his autocracy in this very Mary. 
 Fanny used to bore her husband a little with her 
 attentions and her solicitude — for it was always her 
 way to be solicitous about anybody she cared for — 
 notwithstanding that theirs was a love maiTiage, 
 and he was sincerely attached to her then. I dare 
 say he is so still, under the rough surface of every- 
 day use, and of the hard lines of wear and tear, 
 and of feelins; himself worsted in the world. He 
 was too upright a man not to value her dutiful- 
 ness, and Fanny was always the essence of duty 
 according to her light. She w^as as steadftist, poor 
 soul, as a rock, and she is not changed. There she 
 sits, the very same woman as when she was ex- 
 ercised in her mind about Gcrty Philpot's copying 
 her sum, or Miss Babberton, the junior governess, 
 making eyes at the last curate. I can remember 
 when John Carteret thought Fanny the most 
 charming little precisian witliin these bounds. 
 I dare say he holds still that she is a very good 
 sort of a woman, and that it was not the heaviest 
 misfortune which has befallen him when she crossed 
 his path. But I can comprehend that, when he 
 first began to be staggered by the want of that 
 companionship which his wife could never give 
 him, he was induced to turn to his little daughter 
 and try to mould her to his needs. Fanny was 
 just the woman to resent unconsciously the ])re- 
 ference, and be rendered jealous of her own child
 
 so BY THE ELBE. 
 
 as an interloper between her and lier liusband. 
 Perhaps — who knows ? — she started an opposition 
 faction when the next baby, the son and heir, 
 came ; any way, she was certain to exaggerate 
 his importance, and to make him take the first 
 place, though she would not forget liis sister's 
 rights. I have heard that both the boys have 
 turned out fairly ill ; that is, as ill as could have 
 been expected if they were nothing out of the 
 common, while they were made hothouse plants 
 of by Fanny, and, as a corrective, neglected or 
 bulhed by their father, and when all the time they 
 had inherited their share of the father and mo- 
 ther's uprightness to hold them back from wanton 
 profligacy or utter worthlessness. Then there are 
 the two younger girls, the last grown up treasures, 
 to fill the vacancy which the expatriation of 
 her sons has left in Fanny's aching heart. I know 
 she does not acknowledge their failure ; only their 
 fiither, though an excellent man, was hard upon, 
 and fortune was against the young men. Well, 
 probably their father had too much to do to inter- 
 fere with the younger girls' rearing, and to decoy 
 them from the safe and level paths of vain and 
 frivolous girlhood — shall I be harsh enough to 
 call it ? He is content with having suborned 
 Mary ; and very likely she is an eccentric, aggres- 
 sive, disagreeable young woman, amply warranting 
 her mother's lamentations.' 
 
 Just when Mrs. Penfeather arrived at this staize
 
 iir THE ELBE. 31 
 
 of her meditations, she was aroused and overcome 
 by the flattery of Mrs. Carteret's earnest protest, ' If 
 you had only come home sooner, Celia, or if we 
 had not been relinquishing our old life — you can- 
 not think the shock it has been to me to o-ive it 
 up, but I feel more and more strengthened for my 
 duty when I find how much I have to do, and 
 lend myself to each requirement as it comes — you 
 might have been such a help to me ; you might 
 have persuaded Mr. Carteret to be more patient 
 with the boys ('as if you could have endured any 
 persuasion save your own to influence your hus- 
 band,' put in Mrs. Penfeather, in a private note 
 of remonstrance). He would have had tJiem men 
 before tliey were major (' and if the child is not 
 father to the man, what chance is there for the 
 man ? ' Mrs. Penfeather still made a safety valve 
 for her convictions by following out her private 
 hue of argument) ; you might have been of the 
 greatest use to Mary. I have so much to think of 
 and arrange ; there is never a moment's rest or re- 
 laxation for the mother of a grown-up family 
 and the mistress of a country house, whicli 
 last burden used 1o be enoucfh for me, vou re- 
 member ? when I was a young head of a house- 
 hold twenty years ago. But I shall soon be free 
 from that charge,' she added, with quick ruefulness 
 belying her words. 'I have had no time to 
 devote myself to Mary, and win her from bccomiufi- 
 singular and conspicuous, which will be entirely
 
 32 ^ BY THE ELBE. 
 
 the result of her having been so much with her 
 father, and of his humouring iier in the idle fancy 
 that she can help him with liis farming and ac- 
 counts. Nonsense ! ' broke off Mrs. Carteret, 
 abruptly, ' how can a girl help a man except in 
 keeping out of his way, or in amusing him when 
 he is hipped, in addition to being modest and 
 dutiful in her behaviour — not teasimr him for sea- 
 sons in town or for the house full in autumn, or not 
 getting ill inappropriately and having to be sent 
 to the seaside when the family have no need of 
 fresh expenses. I could have depended on you, 
 Celia, as on myself; you would hc^ve shown Mary 
 what it is to be womanly and keep within bounds, 
 and I believe you might have impressed on the 
 child — a dear, generous girl all the time, remem- 
 ber — how to preserve at once her dignity, deli- 
 cacy, and womanliness all unimpaired.' 
 
 ' Mercy on me ! ' murmured Mrs. Penfeather, 
 almost audibly ; ' I feel like a wolf in sheep's 
 clothing. Fanny is measuring me by the outline 
 wliich existed when I was a shy demure girl. 
 What would she think of me if she knew of the 
 deeds I have done since I saw her last ? I went 
 out all alone with a company of black men — I 
 could get no others at the time, and it was not be- 
 cause of them that I wondered my feet could carry 
 me — to learn from a shipmate the minutest particu- 
 lars of the manner in which my Hugh met his 
 end. When the rebellion broke out at other
 
 BY THE ELBE. 33 
 
 stations in India, I left oiu: own compost one 
 night after midnight, unaccompanied even by my 
 ayah, since the woman was not to be trusted, and 
 made my way to the Major's bungalow at the 
 opposite end of the English quarter in order to 
 carry him a message, which saved him — the most 
 unpopular man in the regiment — from going next 
 morning on parade, when my poor General, who 
 had been hke a father to his division, was shot 
 down like a dog by the sepoys. Then I had to 
 flee for my worthless life in company with a 
 doctor and a lieutenant, a sergeant and four private 
 soldiers, but with not another woman in the com- 
 pany. We were three weeks on the road. I cooked 
 what food we could procure, and I washed what 
 rags we had kept, with not a man that did not treat 
 me as he would have treated his own mother and 
 sister, only there was not much room for conven- 
 tional distance and reserve between us. I suppose 
 my perceptions and standards were sensibly im- 
 paired ; for in Italy and France, afterwards, when 
 there was less excuse for it, I have been called in by 
 the village landlord of an osteria and an auberge 
 to settle a dispute ; and I have spoken up on my own 
 account, and scolded a cruel donkey driver in a 
 crowded marketplace. What an imposition I 
 must be, not to carry my misdeeds, which Fanny 
 never inquires into, on my face, and so prevent 
 her from trusting me in this implicit and outra- 
 geous fashion ! ' 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Mary came into the room and was introduced 
 to Mrs. Penfeather, to the interruption of the con- 
 versation. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather was agreeably surprised to find 
 her accused god-daughter a brown-haired blooming 
 girl, in a girl's dinner dress of white muslin and 
 blue ribbons. She stopped short however of blue 
 stockings, and there was not a suspicion about her 
 of the soil and stain of labour and independence, 
 whether in ink spots, m dust patches, or in bold 
 and contradictory tone and bearing. 
 
 If there was anything in which Mary Carteret 
 differed from other girls as far as Mrs. Penfeather's 
 preinformed and speculative eyes could detect, it 
 was in the greater softness and consideration for 
 others that was born of her greater though tfulness 
 and deeper sense of responsibility. 
 
 Mary, on her part, approached Mrs. Penfeather 
 with the mingled longing and shrinking with 
 which men and women who have gone through 
 exceptional trials are apt to inspire sensitive 
 young persons. The longing had predominated in 
 Mary's case. Therefore the disillusion had been all 
 the greater when she found that Mrs. Penfeather, 
 whose young sailor husband had been drowned 
 within the first year of their marriage, and w^ho 
 had been in the heat of a terrible mutiny in which 
 her only brother and sole surviving relation had 
 fallen, was in externals just such a still, nicely 
 mannered woman as Mary might have imagined
 
 BY THE ELBE. 35 
 
 any favourite juvenile companion of her mother's 
 would have become. Mary could not distin- 
 guish at the first sight the faintest indication of 
 the tragedy queen about Mrs. Penfeather, and, as 
 she did not pause to consider how much out of 
 place the character would have been in the 
 Warren drawing-room at this date, she simply 
 felt vexed by the omission. 
 
 Fra and Lyd would have entertained no vexa- 
 tion of the kind, supposing they had not gone away 
 on a farewell visit to some girls of their own age 
 in the next country house. They were not in the 
 least sorry to miss Mrs. Penfeather's arrival. Seen 
 or unseen there was no halo about her to them. 
 They belonged to the hard, levelling, rather than 
 to the yawning, pooh-poohing school into which a 
 section of young England has descended. A 
 widow who had been left a widow within a year 
 of her wifehood, and who had borne the full brunt 
 of the Indian rebelhon, was very little more to the 
 young inexperienced ghls than any other widow 
 or woman. She was almost certain to be old- 
 fashioned and tiresome, strait-laced and fidgety, 
 like others of mamma's old friends ; very probably 
 she was also lazy and imperious as many Anglo- 
 Indians showed themselves. That was all they 
 knew about it. Indeed the young girls were very 
 glad to have the chance of missing so much of 
 Mrs. Penfeather's visit. 
 
 Mary took up some elaborate embroidery. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ' I see you sew, Mary,' said Mrs. Penfeather. 
 thrown off her guard. 
 
 ' I should think I do,' replied Mary, in her 
 wonder, also surprised into a strong exclamation. 
 ' I am not so devoted to our sewing machine, 
 though I can work it with tolerable success, as to 
 be incapable of using a needle. I am fond of 
 embroidery. I like to sit and plan how it will 
 turn out, to exercise my taste in the selection of 
 materials, colours, and stitches, and then to plod 
 on at what can be made of them. I am often 
 tempted to sit whole mornings and evenings over 
 such work.' 
 
 ' You don't despise it, then ? ' questioned Mrs. 
 Penfeather. 
 
 ' I hope not,' answered Mary, opening her eyes, 
 and speaking a little gravely, and then a re- 
 collection forced her to laugh. ' Fra and Lyd 
 despise it in these later days ; they were once 
 engrossed with it, but they have begun to think 
 that it is only fit for hum-drum elderly women 
 and small creatures, and beneath the attention of 
 girls of spirit and soul. They are fresh from 
 school,' she added quickly, as an explanation of, 
 and apology for, any shortcoming of wisdom 
 which she had betrayed in her sisters. 
 
 ' Come, you are not altogether spoilt for a 
 woman,' thought Mrs. Penfeather. 
 
 The next surprise which Mary afforded Mrs. 
 Penfeather was by the repressed enthusiasm with
 
 BY THE ELBE. 37 
 
 which she began to speak of a novel that Mrs. 
 Penfeather found lying on a table and took up 
 and made a remark upon. 
 
 'You read novels too,' said Mrs. Penfeather, 
 with a slight smile. 
 
 'I should think I do,' said Mary, insensible 
 of repeating herself in the emphatic phrase that 
 was not habitual with her, and in the puzzled 
 stare by which it was accompanied. ' Papa and 
 mamma never made any objection to novels as 
 novels. I have enjoyed them all my life, and I 
 don't stick in even the stupider books which Fra 
 and Lyd throw aside after a glance. Somehow, 
 they gallop through the best, and call novels slow 
 which are only too entrancing to me ; that is 
 when the girls speak of books at all, for I can't 
 tell you why, but books don't make enough im- 
 pression upon their minds to induce Fra and Lyd 
 to discuss the very stories which have interested 
 them. The girls complain of me for being guilty 
 of affectation in talking of heroes and heroines as 
 if they were real men and women, and I say how 
 can I help it ? I think they will be more real to 
 my sisters when they have gone a little farther 
 beyond the small world of school, and when they 
 are better able for comparison and reflection,' 
 finished Mary hopefully. 
 
 ' Upon my word I do not see what Fanny has 
 to cry out about in Mary,' recorded Mrs. Penfea- 
 ther on her mental tablets ; ' she appears to me as
 
 38 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 tamely domestic, and at the same time as impulsive 
 and imaginative — as much in danger of being led 
 away by her dreams and feelings, as a girl ought 
 to be. I suppose Fanny would not have her cal- 
 culating and worldly. There is a shade of unusual 
 simplicity and candour, of tolerance acquired from 
 her father, no doubt, and of fidelity in speaking of 
 her sisters as they are, while she is prompted to 
 defend them — but that is about all which is odd 
 in the girl.' 
 
 During dinner Mrs. Penfeather had further 
 opportunities for observation. 
 
 The Squire had altered much more in the 
 outward man than his wife had altered in the 
 outward woman. His large frame was over- 
 grown in spite of marks of regular out-of-door 
 exercise, as if inertness were creeping over and 
 buoyancy leaving him ; he stooped a good deal, 
 and his chin was apt to rest on his breast after 
 the fashion of much older men. His hair was 
 iron grey, and his eyes had a sunk look in cheeks 
 the brick red firmness of which had become 
 streaked with purple and flabby in flesh. There 
 was no unmanly dejection about him, and he was 
 by no means the man to wear his heart on his 
 sleeve ; while Mrs. Penfeather, though she had 
 been an old and valued friend of his wife whom 
 he was disposed to treat with all respect, had 
 naturally not been his companion and confidante. 
 He was not a man, indeed, who had ever had
 
 BY THE ELBE. 39 
 
 many intimate associates, men or women, though 
 he had owned a few close and devoted friends. 
 His attainments, sucli as they were, had rather 
 removed him from his immediate set. He had 
 led a comparatively retired and isolated life, and 
 was a man to whom localities and habits had 
 become specially precious. 
 
 It was not difficult to see that this uprooting 
 and transplanting of the Squire of the Warren, 
 after he was well up in years, from the scenes 
 and the occupations which had been the great 
 resources of his life, was hke entering upon the 
 same process with reference to a tree that had 
 passed its full growth. 
 
 At the same time Mr. Carteret was exerting 
 himself to entertain Mrs. Penfeather as a guest 
 whom he held in esteem. His manner had always 
 been, apart from its company side, courteous, kindly, 
 and indulgent to his wife and to all his household, 
 even while he was by temperament free spoken, 
 and impelled by what was original and able in 
 the man, to say a thing to the point and in season, 
 whether it were generally or individually accep- 
 table or not. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather remarked the different ways 
 of the household with the lively interest of an 
 entirely disengaged woman, whose sympathies, in 
 spite of the large demands which had been made 
 on them on her own account, and notwithstanding 
 what she said of herself, were fresh as in the days
 
 40 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 of her youth as only a clever, warm hearted woman 
 can retain fresh sympathies. She did not distin- 
 guish any change in Mr. Carteret's tone to his 
 wife, unless that subtle change which was con- 
 veyed in his involuntarily turning to Mary for an 
 intelligent response whenever the talk passed be- 
 yond old reminiscences, household concerns or 
 neighbourly gossip. 
 
 It was not that Mrs. Carteret was incapable of 
 conversing on anything besides, but that her in- 
 terest was languid and her opinions inevitably 
 opposed to those of her husband. She could not 
 see that the Palestine Exploration or the Arctic 
 Expedition were anything save a waste of life 
 and property when we still held and beheved our 
 Bibles, and when there was not even a possibility 
 of fresh channels for commerce to be opened up 
 within the Polar Seas. She did not approve of 
 the Board Schools, when her late father the 
 Eector's schools, which had done good service, as 
 she could testify, in their day, were still in exis- 
 tence. Army reform, with scores of old county 
 men and cousins in the army by purchase, was 
 specially distasteful to her ; and she looked upon 
 vote by ballot as quite un-Enghsh and altogether 
 unmanly. 
 
 When the avant-coureurs of such questions 
 had been last approached at the Warren dinner 
 table in Mrs. Penfeather's hearing, Mr. Carteret 
 had been too young a man and too busy with his
 
 BY THE ELBE. 41 
 
 personal engagements to do more than tlieorise 
 upon principles which were then only rising above 
 the horizon, though even at that time, as Mrs. 
 Penfeather had a dim remembrance, he would 
 make a sudden trenchant observation which would 
 set her — a raw young woman — thinking a httle. 
 
 In those days Mary was a child in arms, 
 fit only to smile, pout and play bo-peep over 
 her father's shoulder. Now^ she sat there fair in 
 her temporary gravity and sweet in her honest 
 large-heartedness and large-mindedness — a reflec- 
 tion of her father's own best endowments. In 
 addition she had the intense desire, which be- 
 longed more to her womanliness, to enter into 
 the experience of another, and to reach after him 
 in his conclusions, in order to form independent 
 conclusions of her own — seeing that she had nei- 
 ther the disposition nor had she received the 
 rearing which would have qualified her to serve 
 merely as a softer, fainter echo of her father. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather could not wonder that the 
 speaker — too well convinced of the hopeless 
 irresponsiveness of the lady at tlie head of the 
 table opposite him, should, without the slightest 
 household treachery, even without any deliberate 
 intention, in the mere requirements of social 
 intercourse, have had recourse to that other 
 hstener, who answered so surely and so pleasantly 
 and as fully as her sex and youth would admit, to 
 every appeal of his. This was true not merely on
 
 42 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 great national topics, which, to be sure, bulk far too 
 largely to be admitted freely and fi'equently within 
 the limits of a family dinner table, but on those 
 trivial, yet to the master of the house important 
 enough personal affau-s, about which Mrs. Carteret 
 had lono; forofotten to care. She had been mono- 
 pohsed by her own common round and daily task. 
 It was to Mary that Mr. Carteret glanced when he 
 referred to an interview with his new tenant and 
 an opinion of his lawyer, as when he dealt with 
 public news further off and of wider import. 
 
 In the meantime Mrs, Carteret was borne 
 away on her own separate undercurrent of talk 
 at intervals, and of thought always, on cook and 
 Mary Jane, Eichard and William, who were to 
 be parted from, and nurse and James, who were 
 to be taken with the family, in the breaking-up of 
 the household, on elaborations of packing and 
 illustrations of crossing the Channel with minutest 
 items as to the destination of the travellers. Into 
 all these personal problems Mrs. Carteret had, as 
 was her nature, thrown herself at last with such 
 zeal and self-devotion, that here, as she had said, 
 virtue was its own reward. She had vigour of 
 mind to enter with a positive zest into the 
 dismemberment as well as the reconstruction, 
 under which not only the Squire but Mary sighed 
 and sickened. 
 
 It was all the plain result of the persons and 
 their relations. No doubt husbands and wives
 
 BY THE ELBE. 43 
 
 in their long tete-k-tetes, beneficial for the most 
 part, have a tendency to assimilate more and 
 more in their cast of thought and feehng ; until 
 the very faces, catching the same shades of expres- 
 sion, grow like each other Avith a harmony that is 
 a little prone to be monotonous. If Mr. and Mrs. 
 Carteret had dwelt alone together on a desert 
 island it is possible that this infectious and imi- 
 tative faculty might have so dominated as to 
 work the great revolution of either — whether 
 painfully or not — contracting his mind or expand- 
 ing hers, till they came nearer an equality. But 
 the Warren had not been a desert island ; there 
 had been plenty of distractions for both hus- 
 band and wife to arrest the fusing process ; above 
 all there had been an innocent third party who 
 had come between and seriously divided still more 
 the couple joined in wedlock. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather could not blame anybody ; yet 
 she was sorry for her old friend, who, in addition 
 to her other trials — though quitting the Warren 
 had been robbed of its sting — must be troubled by, 
 and resentful for what she could neither compre- 
 hend nor prevent. And all the time in her heart 
 of hearts she loved both husband and daughter 
 with a true love, which they were quick to 
 acknowledge, though there was a shade of sad- 
 ness in the acknowledgment. 
 
 ' Fra and Lyd will be happy to meet you 
 to-morrow,' Mrs. Carteret had observed to her
 
 44 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 friend, and then she had entered her protest 
 against the abbreviations of her daughters' names. 
 ' I did not give them these titles. I daresay the 
 custom originated with the boys, and was adhered 
 to, as anything short and unmodified finds favour 
 now-a-days. It was not so when we were young, 
 Ceha. I shall say nothing for my own every- 
 day name, but is not Celia a more womanly 
 and polished — I shall not say an infinitely more 
 charminc^ — shortenino; of Cecilia than Ciss, which 
 would be the name applied in the nursery, and 
 descending to the drawing-room, to your grand- 
 child, if you had one, dear ? ' 
 
 ' Mrs. Penfeather will excuse me for giving 
 an opinion which I believe I have enunciated of 
 old,' said the Squire, ' that Celia and Delia come 
 too near the Chloe and Daphne order of names. 
 We are too dead in earnest, not to say too 
 commercial, in the nineteenth century for mock 
 pastorals.' Even in the trifle of names there 
 was no correspondence of sentiment between 
 husband and wife.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 45 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LAST GUEST WELCOME AT THE WARREN. 
 
 'On the whole I am reheved, though it is 
 prolonging an evil,' said Mr. Carteret, speaking 
 over his opened letters at the breakfast table next 
 morning, ' that we have all ' — and here he glanced 
 with a degree of sedulousness at his wife — ' settled 
 to put off shutting shop and locking the Warren 
 doors, so far as we have to do with them, for an- 
 other week. Not only must I go over to Sandford 
 for a day or two to take the reckoning there off 
 that poor incapable genius Kit Must's hands, I 
 find there is a young fellow coming here whom I 
 cannot with a good grace refuse to receive. Taff 
 Penryn of Seabright's son, Fanny — we must give 
 him such quarters as we can offer for a day or two, 
 till he see those new chemical works at Sandford, 
 which are his attraction. Dabbles in chemicals — 
 a nice dreamy, abstruse inclination, almost as good 
 as going in search of the philosopher's stone, for a 
 young gentleman with a learned foreign education 
 and out at the elbows as he is. Well, I took up 
 agricultural chemistry in my day and made a con-
 
 46 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 siderable mess of it. I need not fling stones at 
 youngsters who have not had a chance to start 
 with,' ended the Squire, with a proud humihty in 
 the admission of his own errors of judgment, 
 that was pathetic to one pair of ears hearing 
 him. 
 
 ' It is very inconvenient having a visitor just 
 now,' said Mrs. Carteret, with unconscious asperity 
 sounding in her tones — much more than in those 
 of her husband, though she was really not so 
 crushed by adverse fortunes — not even by the 
 failure of her sons to redeem these fortunes. 
 
 She was still able to see her boys — they were 
 emphatically hers — with a thousand redeeming 
 quahties, and with the chances of their returning 
 fully armed and victorious men in the struggle 
 against gentle poverty in the wilds ; while their 
 father only beheld in them two weak lads who had 
 succumbed easily to common temptation, and with 
 regard to whom, as they had done little good here, 
 the best which could be hoped for them was that 
 they would do little harm there. 
 
 Even supposing their mother had entertained 
 the same conviction that was an intense mortifi- 
 cation to their father, she would have been in a 
 great manner consoled by counterbalancing merits 
 which she would have seen through the strongest 
 magnifying glass. She would have indemnified 
 herself for any wound to her maternal vanity by 
 the dehght of still contributing to a large extent
 
 BY THE ELBE. 47 
 
 to her children's welfare. There can be few 
 greater joys to a woman like Mrs. Carteret than 
 the sense of being essential to the comfort and 
 pleasure of those she loves. In return for this 
 assurance she will submit cheerfully to almost 
 any amount of care and annoyance. It was her 
 unexpressed feehng that her husband and her eldest 
 daughter had passed beyond her reach and aid, 
 which hurt her where they were concerned. 
 
 But Mrs. Carteret's peculiar motherly tender- 
 ness to her boys did not render her readily 
 accessible to other young men, neither had its 
 alleviations prevented that quick cutting intonation 
 born of the hurry and worry of life, daily acting 
 and reacting on a narrow intensely conscientious 
 nature. ' I had forgotten that TafT Penryn had 
 any children, or else I believed they were all 
 settled abroad. What can bring tliis one here at 
 such an awkward time ? It is bad enough to 
 have my own old friend Celia Penfeather coming 
 when I cannot make much of her or have the full 
 benefit of her company, though I am sure I am 
 very glad to see her again ; but to put up with a 
 strange young fellow, whom nobody knows, dis- 
 turbing our final arrangements — that is quite too 
 bad.' 
 
 ' It must be borne with, like the contradiction 
 of Mustapha's proposing to throw me, as an 
 extraordinary variety in his paces, when I rode 
 him in company with his intended purchaser
 
 48 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 the other day,' suggested Mr. Carteret, with a 
 suspicion of weariness under his jest. 
 
 While Mrs. Carteret had been speaking she 
 had not for a moment entertained the intention of 
 dechniug to afford the Warren hospitality to this 
 last guest to whom her husband considered it was 
 due. He was master in his own house ; she was a 
 faithful wife, to whom disobedience was purely in- 
 admissible. She only used her British privilege, 
 which a woman may share with a man, of vain 
 remonstrance and idle grumbling. 
 
 In other circumstances Mr. Carteret would 
 have understood this perfectly; but the times and 
 the man were out of joint ; his old landmarks 
 were shifting ; his faith in his kinsfolk and fellows 
 beginning to totter. He looked after his wife with 
 some wistfulness when she rose from the table and 
 left the room, not without a dignity of her own, in 
 the middle of her superabundant energy — on the 
 whole a beneficent little figure bent on some one of 
 her many avocations. For, though Mrs. Carteret's 
 faith was not shaken like her husband's for the 
 reason that it had never been very wide, she 
 had not been accustomed to trust to others what 
 she could do herself. 'She was persuaded that she 
 could best see to the clearing out of the green- 
 house, the shutting up of the deserted rooms, the 
 disposing of the housekeeper's stores, the con- 
 ducting of the extensive correspondence of these 
 last weeks.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 49 
 
 ' I hope your mother will make the best of 
 this inappropriate visit ; that she will not let 
 young Penryn see that he is de trop^' he trusted 
 himself to say to Mary. 
 
 'You may depend upon it that she will be 
 perfectly gracious to any guest,' said Mary, a 
 little puzzled by her father's doubt. ' Mamma 
 cannot help being substantially kind, though she 
 is so much occupied just now that she is put 
 out by an inappropriate incident, I only wish that 
 she would suifer me to help her, though I should 
 fret her more by my bungling than by my assis- 
 tance, at first.' 
 
 ' The lad comes at an unlucky time for every- 
 body,' said Mr. Carteret, not pa3ring much atten- 
 tion to what Mary said after the comfort of her 
 first assurance, ' but I should be vexed if he were 
 made to feel it.' 
 
 ' Is he a person of so much importance, papa ? 
 I am quite impressed,' said Mary, with rising 
 interest and returning gaiety, arriving in her own 
 mind at quite a different conclusion from that of 
 her father and mother. It was good that anyone 
 should come for whom her father had the least 
 regard, to take him from the mournfulness of the 
 situation, to divert his attention, were it but for a 
 few hours, into other channels, and to amuse him. 
 Mary could not calculate, with all her love and 
 loyalty, how heavy her father's mind was, and how 
 little capable it was at this moment of so much 
 
 VOL. L E
 
 50 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 as being bored, which is a feat more easily per- 
 formed than that of being distracted, while her 
 own youthful spirit could rise at a touch and with 
 a bound from even a tolerably heavy weight. 
 
 ' He is of no importance whatever in his own 
 person, though an old Penryn of Seabright was 
 once somebody in the parish,' answered her father. 
 ' They went before us ; this lad's father was forced 
 to sell out to the last ground rent. There was 
 no entail with them any more than with us. I 
 don't know that it would have helped them if there 
 had. I did what I could for the elder Taff 
 Penryn (I see this fellow signs himself Alfred 
 also, and I dare say he is TafF in his turn) ; he 
 was not old in those days — or, indeed, when he 
 died — but he was beyond being saved,' 
 
 ' I have heard you and mamma mention the 
 Penryns of Seabright,' said Mary, 'though the 
 place has belonged to the Wallises ever since I 
 can recollect.' 
 
 ' Of course ; Penryn left the country only two 
 years after I married your mother. He ran 
 quickly through his short time of Seabright.' 
 
 'Was he very improvident or very unfortu- 
 nate ? ' Mary continued to ask, excited to interest 
 in the subject by the hold it appeared to have on 
 her father, who was walking up and down the 
 breakfast-room, or standing and gazing abstractedly 
 out of the window, like a man absorbed in the
 
 BY THE ELBE. 51 
 
 conversation, while Mary sat still at the breakfast- 
 table to bear him company. 
 
 'He was both,' he said shortly, in reply to 
 Mary's question ; ' but it is not for us to sit in 
 judgment on him. You will say so when you 
 hear — as there is no reason, beyond an old 
 grudge to speak of the obligation, that you 
 should not hear — ^what I owed to him in my time. 
 Did your mother ever speak to you of the great 
 risk I once ran of not inheriting this place ? I 
 suppose I have cared for it all the more because 
 of what it cost me. It seems I was to pay the 
 forfeit of parting with it, after all.' 
 
 'But not altogether,' said Mary, eager to 
 contradict her father on this point, and to win 
 him to a more sanguine view of the case ; ' far 
 from that ; only till you have retrieved your 
 losses.' 
 
 ' And when will that be, do you think, child ? ' 
 demanded her father impatiently and scornfully ; 
 for he was not a man who could play with facts 
 and indulge in agreeable self-delusions, even to 
 save himself from the sharpest pangs. ' The 
 place never paid in a business sense. I had not 
 enough ready money for what was required 
 when I entered on the property. Many things 
 were run out under the old regime. If I had 
 done what I ought, I should have sold the 
 Warren then, as I had the power to do. But I 
 had been brought up to inherit the estate, such as 
 
 E 2
 
 52 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 it was, and to do nothing else. The Hfe of a 
 country gentleman suited me. I thought I could 
 be of some use here, and I could be happy 
 in my own way. I could make my household 
 expenses few — I trusted to your mother to 
 support me, which she has not failed to do. 
 But it is idle to speak : my calculations have 
 proved erroneous. I have not been a successful 
 farmer of my own land ; family expenses on 
 which I did not count have fallen upon me ; in 
 short, it has come to this pass — and I have not 
 even the consolation of thinkino- that no one will be 
 justified in saying " serve liim right, for a piece of 
 pride and folly," ' he finished, with a forced smile. 
 
 ' You did your best,' said Mary in a low tone, 
 as if it were presumption in her to speak at this 
 crisis, and with brimming eyes, as she stooped 
 over the crumbs which she had been collecting 
 for the pigeons. 
 
 ' Who shall say,' objected the Squire, in 
 stern self-accusal — ' who shall say what my best 
 might have been if I had not yielded to selfish 
 impulses, if I had not suffered myself to be 
 blinded by class prepossessions and prejudices, if 
 I had possessed more enterprise ? I don't think I 
 wanted pluck. Well, well — it has ended in your 
 brothers having had to go far enough afield to 
 seek their fortunes, and with even a worse 
 preparation for making their way in the world 
 than I had. But it was not of that we were 
 speaking.'
 
 BY THE ELBE. 53 
 
 ' You were enquiring whether mamma had 
 ever told me that you had run some risk of not 
 succeeding to the Warren,' Mary reminded him 
 quickly. ' She has often said that you were not a 
 favourite with my grandaunt Sophia, who had 
 the Warren before you.' 
 
 ' There was a great deal more in it than that/ 
 declared Mr. C^trteret, stopping in the walk up 
 and down the room, which he had resumed ; ' but 
 your mother never would believe in the danger, 
 or that my aunt was capable of disinheriting me. 
 Your mother was too just a woman herself to 
 compass the probabihty of such injustice in 
 another. It was the talk of the neidibourhood, 
 nevertheless ; and it caused your grandfather — 
 your mother's father, of course — to be so cool to 
 me — though he was a worthy, unambitious country 
 clergyman, but he was bound to have a care for 
 his daughter's interest — every time I went near 
 the rectory, that I had half a mind not to wait 
 to stand in a dead woman's uncertain shoes, but 
 to go abroad. Portugal, then engaged in a civil 
 war, or the backwoods of Canada, were the great 
 resort of the Adullamites in those days. It .has 
 come to look a pity that I did not act on my 
 resolution.' 
 
 ' But to whom could Aunt Sophia have given 
 the Warren, failing you : slie liad no other 
 nephews?' said Mary. 
 
 ' JSTo other nephews ; and, besides, you are
 
 54 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 aware I was the son of a cousin as well as a 
 nephew : your grandmother — my mother — had 
 preserved the name by marrying into a younger 
 branch of the family; but there was no entail, as 
 I said, and the direct lineal descent from father 
 to son had never failed till my grandfather left 
 only three daughters behind him. One died 
 young, the others were my Aunt Sophia and my 
 mother. Though so near akin and left alone 
 together in the world, there was no love lost 
 between them ; they had never been on cordial 
 sisterly terms, from causes too remote to penetrate 
 — even if they would repay the discovery — but I 
 believe chiefly because of my Aunt Sopliia's 
 tyrannical temper. She had not approved of my 
 mother's marriage, as she never approved of any 
 step which her younger sister took ; yet, as she 
 could fiu*nish no good reason for her disapproval, 
 there was a show of friendship between the 
 sisters, and I was brought up and spoiled for any 
 good as the heir, though I was never welcome 
 here. 
 
 ' When I left the University after my father's 
 and mother's deaths, matters became a great deal 
 worse. I could not brook my aunt's imperious- 
 ness, in which there was no mixture of natural 
 affection. I do not think that I could have 
 brought myself to stoop to coax her — while my 
 father had left me sufficient income for my personal 
 requirements, and I had no debts — even though
 
 BY THE ELBE. 55 
 
 I had reckoned that the succession depended on 
 her goodwill. I did not see it in that light, I 
 knew that the place was mine by right, and I could 
 not realise, any more than your mother could, 
 that though my aunt w^as notoriously indifferent, 
 even averse to me, she could bring herself to 
 die with such an act of gross injustice on her 
 conscience as that of depriving me of all that 
 was left of our common ancestor's property.' 
 
 ' And if she had been so heartless as well as 
 unjust, to wdiom could she have left the Warren 
 if not to you? ' repeated Mary; 'to her servants or 
 to a public charity ? ' 
 
 ' She was not reduced to that,' explained ]\ir. 
 Carteret ; ' although she had no near, hardly any 
 distant kindred, except myself, she had one friend 
 for whom she woidd have done or ventured any- 
 thing. She was a strange woman. She could 
 not be reconciled to the sister who had never 
 committed any serious offence against her, and 
 yet she freely forgave the man who had jilted and 
 forsaken her, so far as to centre all the tenderness 
 that was in her on his son, and that was Taff 
 Penryn — this Taff's father. To him she was all 
 that was kind and generous ; and as he was a 
 frank, accessible fellow, he was a great deal with 
 her, transacting her business for her, standing in 
 my place, and receiving in return such regard 
 as she had to bestow. I can comprehend now 
 what a close shave it was ; how it depended on the
 
 56 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 cast of a die whether smothered right or rampant, 
 almost doting, affection should decide who was to 
 have the old Warren.' 
 
 ' But right won the day,' said Mary, with a 
 gesture of triumph. 
 
 ' I began to see how little likely it was to win 
 some time before the end,' continued her father, 
 without any echo of her triumph in his gravity. 
 ' I had never cared much for Taff Penryn. 
 Though he had his good qualities, they were not 
 mine, and I drew back from him at last with 
 distrust and indication. But I could not de- 
 nounce what I grew to believe were the mer- 
 cenary designs hidden under his apparent good 
 nature, neither could I bring myself to make 
 any fresh overtures to my aunt, which I told 
 myself would be useless. At last the end came 
 suddenly ; my aunt was found dead in her chair — 
 dying alone, as for the most part she had lived. 
 I was sent for and put in charge, though I 
 doubted more and more whether I had come 
 into my inheritance. Taff Penryn arrived, and 
 offered to help me, but I rejected his offer with 
 outward stiffness and secret rage, and he went 
 away shrugging his broad shoulders, I could 
 not prevent his being at the funeral, and I did 
 not desire that he should not be present at the 
 reading of the will, which was to decide matters 
 between us. I should not have thought of dis- 
 puting it ; there were not so many disputed wills,
 
 BY THE ELBE. 57 
 
 a quarter of a century ago ; and there was no 
 doubt that my Aunt Sophia was in her right 
 mind, the frame of mind which had not varied 
 throughout her hfe. 
 
 ' However, there was no occasion for me to 
 dispute the will, which left the estate and house, 
 and all that it contained, to me, her nephew, John 
 Carteret, without a single good wish or friendly 
 expression of any kind, and bequeathed the little 
 sum of ready money which she had possessed — for 
 neither was she a rich woman — as an inadequate 
 token of her entire respect and warm affection 
 for her dear friend and friend's son, Alfred Penryn.' 
 
 ' That was as it should be,' said Mary with 
 quick approval. 
 
 ' Taff Penryn came up with the others, and 
 congratulated me in the easiest fashion possible. 
 I was taken aback, and in a tumult of relief and 
 exultation, and of some self-reproach. But the next 
 time we were alone together I made a bungling 
 attempt to express in the only indirect way that I 
 could express it — I felt bound to attempt it 
 somehow — my sense that I had done him a wrong. 
 He took me up at once, and spoke out without 
 affront, in the light, jaunty, half-blustering tone 
 that he used about everything — something about 
 my seeing to the end of a millstone at last, and 
 of his being compelled to humour the old woman 
 to prevent her doing an injury to herself as well 
 as to others. She might have fallen into more
 
 58 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 unsafe hands. There was his brother Henry. 
 Miss Carteret, in her friendship for the whole 
 batch of them, had been good even to him ; and 
 — well, there was no occasion for his washing his 
 dirty linen in public — but poor Hal might have 
 been tempted by dire necessity to seize anybody 
 else's bone that was thrown to him. 
 
 ' Certainly, I knew that Henry Penryn was a 
 needy, unscrupulous scamp ; but that was the 
 manner in which his not much better off brother 
 spoke of his own part in having put from him the 
 estate which was laid at his feet.' 
 
 ' He could do nothing else,' said Mary with 
 the haughty integrity and unhesitating deci- 
 sion of youth ; ' it would have been absolutely 
 base in him to take from Aunt Sophia's weak 
 partiality what was yours by every title of law 
 and justice.' 
 
 ' Softly, Mary,' her father corrected her ; ' by 
 no means every title. The estate was truly and 
 lawfully, by English law, my Aunt Sophia's, to sell 
 or dispose of by will as she chose. The person 
 dearest to her on earth, and who had returned her 
 affection from boyhood by what I can conceive 
 now was honest liking, and latterly by acts which 
 might have been a son's, was Taff Penryn. Nine 
 men out of ten in his position, and without even 
 the excuse of knowing, as he did, that the suc- 
 cession to a place which he could have sold next 
 day for forty thousand pounds might serve to
 
 BY THE ELBE. 59 
 
 preserve Seabright — the last remnant of whicli 
 was just slipping tlirougli his loosely grasping 
 fingers — would have considered these reasons ample 
 warrant for allowing himself to be named the heir 
 to the Warren. So far from that, I beheve he 
 tried to apologise to me for coming in for the little 
 sum of ready money — something about my want- 
 ing it myself — though not so badly, to be sure, as 
 he did ; only it would have been all mine had I 
 been on the square with my aunt ; but the question 
 was not which of us wanted it most, but whether 
 she was to be let please herself by giving this 
 bequest to him, in order to keep her from alien- 
 ating the whole property from her family.' 
 
 ' He exonerated himself,' adjudged Mary, in 
 her lofty style of judgment ; ' but as to taking 
 credit for doing what no honourable man could 
 help doing, when the moral right was plain ' 
 
 ' You don't understand,' her father interrupted 
 her, driven to the verge of anger by her want of 
 comprehension ; ' you have some sense for a girl, 
 but you are a girl still. An embarrassed man with 
 an estate of his own not more than half the size of 
 the Warren, and you give no credit — which, mind 
 you, he did not take — for resisting so great a temp- 
 tation! What are you thinking of? Even your 
 mother allowed him merit, and was grateful at tlie 
 time for his magnanimity. At least you would 
 have expected,' went on Mr. Carteret, ' that he 
 and I would have been sworn friends for the rest
 
 60 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 of our lives ; but we never saw much of each other. 
 Heaven help me ! I trust that the burden of a 
 benefit conferred did not tempt me to recoil from 
 an uncongenial benefactor. But I have already 
 said that I tried the best I could manage to help 
 him in the straits which soon overtook him. I 
 will add, in my own defence, that Taff Penryn was 
 not such a consistent hero as romance would 
 have made him. He had been capable, in his 
 reckless good nature, of doing one fine thing; 
 but the further development of his character was 
 not satisfactory. He was light of head as well as 
 light of heart to the last. He went on in plea- 
 sant unprofitableness, making the day and the way 
 ahke, taking and giving with hearty goodwill any 
 gratification of sport or company that came across 
 him ; not attempting any serious, resolute stand 
 against his difficulties or search for an escape from 
 them, till, what I am afraid I must call his really 
 selfish shortsightedness, came to its natural con- 
 clusion. Hard to conceive, is it not, in spite of 
 our knowledge of the mingled web and woof of 
 humanity, that the same man could be at once so 
 unselfish and so selfish ? He was forced to part 
 with the last reversion of Seabright,' pursued Mr. 
 Carteret, before Mary could speak. ' And then he 
 went abroad a great deal more reduced than I am 
 at the present moment, but not so penniless or 
 helpless as to prevent his marrying some girl with- 
 out money or influence — a German professor's
 
 BY THE ELBE. 61 
 
 daughter. I heard of his death not long afterwards, 
 and I beheve the widow's relations brought up the 
 only child. His German mother and grandfather 
 both died within the last few years. I have had 
 some correspondence with him,' added Mr. Car- 
 teret with sudden reserve, which Mary construed 
 into her father's having sought actively to befriend 
 the young man ; ' he has shown ability and inde- 
 pendence; his remote frugal German University 
 Hfe has been in his favour ; but I have never met 
 him. I can only hope for his own sake that he is 
 not very hke his father — the man to whom I owe 
 the Warren,' ended Mr. Carteret, beginning to 
 gather up his letters. 
 
 ' Although I cannot to this moment acknow- 
 ledge what you consider the amount of the obli- 
 gation,' said Mary, 'I am sure we'll do our 
 best to make his stay at the Warren agreeable to 
 Mr. Taff Penryn ; and we'll freely forgive him for 
 robbing us of the melancholy peace of our last 
 private regrets. I dare say he will repay us by 
 giving us a great deal of invaluable information 
 about Germany, and by his consenting to our 
 airing — if we have the face to do it — our atrocious 
 schoolroom German. How his well-trained ears 
 must be shocked ! For my part I shall be prepared 
 for his Avcaring spectacles and smoking in his own 
 room ; but, as he is only half a German, we may 
 reasonably hope he will not vex mamma's soul by 
 trying to swallow his knife, or dangerously fasci-
 
 62 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 nate Fra and Lyd by the size of the ring on his 
 forefinger, according to the style of the Germans 
 we saw on our soHtary sail down the Ehine. Our 
 insular sensibilities and sense of the ridiculous 
 will receive a gradual education, which will be 
 best for ah parties.' Mary spoke half-seriously 
 and more than half-jestingly, half in pride, half 
 in secret concern for her father, to whom she was 
 conscious the conversation was painful, though he 
 had brought it on himself, and had said there 
 was no reason why she should not be acquainted 
 with the peculiar relations which made the hos- 
 pitable reception of the stranger a debt of honour. 
 But her dehberate intention was, ' I will be as 
 good as lean to this poor stray fellow, whose father 
 was good to mine, though I cannot consent to 
 grant that there was anything so very remarkable 
 in one man letting another have his due. Human 
 nature would be still meaner than cynics pretend 
 it is, if that were true.'
 
 BY THE ELBE. 63 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 CHATTER OVER FRIZETTES AXD HAIRPIXS. 
 
 * WoM)ERS will never cease, Lyd,' said Fra Car- 
 teret to her younger sister and satellite. ' There 
 is a whole live young man whose advent has been 
 announced in our absence, and who is coming to 
 dine and stay here and remain a day at his plea- 
 sure. We are coming out. We need not go 
 abroad for adventures. Tliese dear old souls, papa 
 and mamma, are at last awakening to a sense of 
 their duty, and are proposing — too late of coiurse — 
 to do something for their daughters' advantage.' 
 
 ' Fra, don't be so abominably smart and pert,' 
 said Mary, who was standing ready for dinner, for 
 which her sisters were dressing, and in order to 
 receive their account of their visit, and to prevent 
 their being too late ; ' don't talk like a fast girl 
 out of a book.' 
 
 ' And don't talk like a grandmother, Polly,' 
 threw back Fra, as she sat in her white dressing- 
 gown, unrolling her coils of dark hair — the very 
 shade of her mother's. 
 
 'I am not surprised that my conversation
 
 64 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 should take a venerable colour,' said Mary with a 
 twinkle in her eyes ; ' for there is nothing that I 
 hear so much of as these five years in which I am 
 your senior, and by which I am entitled to your 
 deference.' 
 
 ' Deference, indeed!' protested Fra, ' when you 
 had all the good things before papa's affairs went 
 to the dogs. You need not look indignant ; if they 
 are not at the dogs, what is all this row about ? 
 and why are Lyd and I deprived of our natural pri- 
 vileges ? You know that you did come out, Mary ; 
 you were presented to the Queen ; you spent half 
 a season in town ' 
 
 ' So I did ; and as mamma and papa were 
 presented before me, we are supposed to have the 
 entree to all the foreia;n courts which we are to 
 visit on our travels ; and if you are very good 
 children, we shall take you under our wing some- 
 times within the charmed circles.' 
 
 ' We'll not have to be obliged to you,' 
 retorted Fra, fastening what hairdressers call 
 a ' strand ' of hair, not her own, in her tresses, 
 and proceeding to plait the whole together deftly 
 into an extra loop to hang gracefully down her back. 
 ' I have often heard Miss Bradshaw say that there 
 is not the least difficulty now in people who are 
 in a respectable position getting an introduction 
 to a foreis^n court.' 
 
 ' There, now,' said Mary, ' you see the advan- 
 tage you have over me, in spite of my years ; I
 
 BY THE ELBE. 05 
 
 should never have known that without being told, 
 and I have had no Miss Bradshaw to tell nie.' 
 
 ' It has been a great loss, but we could not 
 help it,' apologised Lyd, simpl}^ as she strove to 
 make a loop of her fairer hair, nearer Mary's in 
 tint, in exact copy of her sister's. ' But I daresay 
 you are only saying that in banter,' a hght begin- 
 ning to dawn upon Lyd's somewhat obtuse mind. 
 ' I wish you would say what you mean, Mary, 
 and not take to bantering, like papa.' 
 
 ' It is my advanced age that makes me prone 
 to sarcasm,' said Mary. 
 
 ' If you continue to harp upon your age, 
 Polly, I shall think that you are really ashamed 
 of it, and it Avould bo rather too early to give 
 way to such mortification ; four-and-twenty is not 
 so very old,' said Fra, condescendingly. 
 
 'Am I only four-and-twenty?' asked Mary 
 incredulously ; ' surely four-and-forty at the lowest 
 computation. I feel so elderly witli two such 
 youthful sisters.' 
 
 'Everybody knows,' said Fra with slow 
 solemnity, ' that every girl who has any respect 
 for herself, or who is worth lier salt, has a young 
 man at least, if she has not got an establishment 
 of her own, before she is four-and-twenty ; and 
 then there is no question about her feeling elderly, 
 since she does not stand in her neighbour's way.' 
 
 ' Wlien do you mean to get settled in life, 
 Fra, and to leave a free field to Lyd ? ' 
 
 VOL. I, F
 
 OG BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ' Before I am four-and-twenty, or I shall know 
 tliat I have lost half my charm. I am obliged 
 to look out for myself, since mamma and papa, 
 though they are excellent people in their own 
 way, have no notion of marrying their daughters. 
 I should not have expected anything from papa, 
 who is a superior sort of man, and of course 
 behind the rest of the world in ordinary affairs ; 
 but really I think more might have been looked 
 for from mamma, else I don't know what she is 
 li'ood for.' 
 
 ' For anticipating every want and wish of her 
 liousehold, including the cliildren of the fomily,' 
 said Mary, reproachfully. 
 
 ' I should say that our first want — seeing that 
 papa has never been able to make the Warren 
 pa}^, and that Eegy and Tom have carried off any 
 portions worthy of the name we girls might 
 have had — is well-to-do husbands. People used 
 to keep what they regarded a decent silence on 
 such wants, but men and women are more sincere 
 and less hypocritical now ; and it is never too late 
 to mend. Here is a marriageable man found and 
 brought within the sphere of our fascinations just 
 when we are going. It can be but a hasty flank 
 movement, with our trunks packed, nothing to 
 wear, and the nakedness of the land only too 
 ])lainly exposed ; but I say we ought to encourage 
 the dear old blunderers.' 
 
 ' You are incorrigible, Fra.'
 
 BY THE ELBE. 67 
 
 Not many days before Mr. Carteret had re- 
 marked to Mary, ' It strikes me, Mar}^, that in 
 spite of the tronble which yonr motlier took to 
 find a fit school for your sisters, it has not turned 
 them out well-bred girls.' 
 
 And Mary, standing up for her sisters as well 
 as she could, had said, ' It is the age which is not 
 well bred ; a hurrying, pushing age, which has a 
 weakness for show and assumption of every kind, 
 cannot be a well-bred age.' 
 
 In Mrs. Carteret's uneasy dissatisfaction with 
 Mary's inclination to independence, her propensity 
 to adopt her father's opinions and pursuits rather 
 than her mother's, and her disposition to grapple 
 for herself with some of the social problems of 
 the day, the elder lady had decided tliat the 
 governess for the time — either too starched or 
 too phant as she was apt to be — should be dis- 
 pensed with, and that the two younger girls should 
 go to school for several years. And to school Fra 
 and Lyd had g^ne, when their mother, after tlie 
 most careful and untiring inquiries, had fixed on 
 an unexceptionjible school for tlie girls. And 
 from school the two had returned witli a wonderful, 
 though somewhat superficial amount of general 
 information, glib schoolgirl linguists — which means 
 they had not only read Eacine, Tasso, and Schiller, 
 but had scratched the surface of Moliere, Ariosto, 
 and Goethe — in Fra's case a brilliant musician, in 
 
 r 2
 
 68 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Lyd's a respectable amateur artist ; and under all 
 this sedulous outward cultivation perhaps with no 
 worse principles and tastes, on the whole, than 
 one might have reasonably expected. 
 
 What coidd the heart of woman or mother 
 desire more? Mrs. Carteret was not discon- 
 tented ; she had the same indulgence for her 
 vonno-cr daughters that she had for her sons ; she 
 understood and made allowance for their foibles. 
 They had no aspirations — in seeking to reahse 
 which 1,hey failed to fall back on her for sympathy 
 and support. She could see dimly that there was 
 something precocious in modern girls, as a rule, 
 and that while all schoolgirl frivolity, flippancy, and 
 volatility remained in full force, there was some- 
 thing outside of it which could only be stigmatised 
 as hard and a little coarse. Why, the girls were 
 more worldly than their mothers, and more bent on 
 their comforts being attended to than their fathers. 
 If any bashfulness lingered about them it Avas 
 quickly replaced by boldness ; and as for senti- 
 ment, they laughed it out of conversation like the 
 oldest man about town and frequenter of the 
 clubs. But Mrs. Carteret was also quick enough 
 to discriminate that this premature sharpness, 
 self-indulgence, and mercenariness were the results 
 of a bad standard, that they were childish smart- 
 ness and greed, and that they were for the most 
 part superficial, like all else about the girls. 
 
 Strano-e to say, Mrs. Carteret did not put
 
 BY THE ELBE. GO 
 
 much weight on the absence of reverence so con- 
 spicuous in Fra, and which was her fatal defect. 
 But Avhen one comes to think of it, Mrs. Carteret, 
 righteous woman as she was, was herself deficient 
 in reverence, even as she was destitute of imagina- 
 tion. She laughed a little aside at one of the 
 peculiarities of the girls — their triumphant appre- 
 ciation of their own youth, and the wellnigh 
 laughable iteration with which they kept insisting 
 on proclaiming, to interested and uninterested 
 listeners, the years which divided them, even from 
 Mary and lier contemporaries, Avho would next 
 3"ear be half-way between twenty and thirty. It 
 was not wliat woukl have been considered well 
 bred in Mrs. Carteret's youth ; self-control and 
 subjection were then prominent attributes in a 
 woman's good education. A little modesty and 
 humility were more in practice in those days. Youth 
 had not risen to such a height of privilege as to 
 render its brief possession, even in a sentimental 
 sense, the one crown — fast fleeting — of life itself. 
 Something had been said, whicli was not wholly 
 forgotten twenty years ago, of a hoary head — 
 instead of a brow^n or black or even a tawny or 
 golden head — when it was found in the patlis of 
 righteousness, being a crown of gloiy to its 
 possessor. 
 
 Mrs. Carteiet admitte(l a good deal of such 
 reasoning quite sincerely, but she said to herself 
 that manners change. Much of the formality of
 
 70 EY THE ELBE. 
 
 former generations is laid aside in this ; people 
 pretend to-day to be worse instead of better than 
 they are, Fra and Lyd were girllike — that is, 
 like many modern girls — in their faults. Certainly 
 Mrs. Carteret did not altogether apprehend that 
 Fra and Lyd's arrogant, slightly boisterous youth- 
 fulness was allied to an established and growing 
 incapacity for appreciating all that years are 
 worth. 
 
 Fra was like her mother in face, a clear 
 coloured, small featured brunette, while she was 
 tall and slender in flo-ure. With her brig-ht 
 richness of colour and grace of outline, her high 
 spirits, her sparkling intelligence — albeit there was 
 a manifest shallowness in the sparkle — her auda- 
 cious yet half-unconscious airs and assumptions, 
 Fra Carteret was a very pretty, even a striking- 
 looking, girl. 
 
 Lyd was not like Fra in face and figure. She 
 bore a faint resemblance to Mary in her brown 
 hair and fair fresh colour and rounded, not. ill- 
 grown, slimness. But liyd had not Mary's nose 
 or brow or mouth. Lyd had a low Greek brow, 
 which had more to do with beauty than intellect ; 
 not that Lyd was so near beauty as either of 
 her sisters. Her nose was an hmocent, enquiring, 
 rather round, considerably tip-tilted nose ; her 
 mouth was undecided, both aesthetically and 
 morally. Sometimes, when Lyd was pleased and 
 pleasing, it was a sweet mouth ; in other aspects,
 
 BY THE ELBE. 71 
 
 the lips either hung apart indok^ntly, or pursed 
 themselves up consequentially. 
 
 The time had been when Lyd was — at a dis- 
 tance intellectually — a small shadow of Mary in 
 more than in person ; and when the youngest sister 
 had been as fond of foUo^ving and copying the 
 eldest as Lyd was now a slavish echo of Fra. But 
 the severance of the voun^er ejirls for months at a 
 time from the rest of the family, the throwing them 
 upon each other's resources when they began life in 
 the strange world of a school, wdth Fra by many 
 degrees the stronger spirit, and Lyd prone to 
 dependence, had combined to transfer Lyd's alle- 
 giance entirely. Now, Mary approached as little to 
 Lyd's standard as she did to Fra's ; and Lyd, in tlie 
 wake of Fra., was even disposed to look down a 
 little on Mary, and pity her as beginning to be 
 faded and passee — though she bore her four-and- 
 twenty years lightly and looked fresh and blooming 
 in tlie face, while in fact she was partly super- 
 aniuiated on account of those five or six summers 
 wdthout any fruits. This barren period, in the esti- 
 mation of judges like Fra and Lyd, constituted a por- 
 tion of precious time, the absence of which in their 
 own case was, like the bliss of ignorance, a source 
 of open congratulation to tlie girls. It was as if 
 Mary had been so far weiglied in tlie balance and 
 found wanting. It formed an ominous indication 
 of her ultimate failure in life — a failure in securing 
 an independent existence and influence — which at
 
 72 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 this epoch Fra and Lyd ahke viewed as far more 
 disastrous to a woman than it could be for a 
 man not to succeed in his profession, to make a 
 great crash in some department of pohtics or 
 business, or to retire worsted from all. 
 
 ' I must tell you,' said Mary, seeking always 
 to hurry the girls, since both their father and 
 mother loved punctuality, ' that this last guest is 
 nothing more than the son of an old neighbour of 
 papa's, who was forced to sell Seabright and settle 
 abroad. His successor is landless and I suspect 
 penniless, only a poor, possibly an awkward, 
 German student, with a taste for science and a 
 hankering after the chemical works at Sandford, 
 which brings him here. According to your own 
 declared estimate of " honest poverty," which is 
 the reverse of that of the poet, I hardly think 
 that he will be worthy of your notice.' 
 
 ' I had no great expectations to be disap- 
 pointed,' said Fra, with a resigned air. ' I knew 
 better than that would have come to ; such a fluke 
 was very much what I anticipated from the cha- 
 racter of daddy ; but a young man of any descrip- 
 tion is not to be set at nought in a dead-alive 
 place like this, where boys in jackets or antedi- 
 luvian widowers are the sole specimens of dis- 
 engaged humanity. Come, Lyd, this bursch will 
 serve as an era in our lives in anticipation of 
 something better, if he can do no more. I must 
 have my black lace, and you had better take out
 
 BY THE ELBE. 73 
 
 J our blue silk gown, though nurse will be grumpy 
 about repacking them ; but white muslins are such 
 namby-pamby, bread-and-butter, good missish 
 raiment, and we are so sick of them. I beg your 
 pardon, Mary ; I did not observe that you wore 
 yours. I believe that it is what you wore yesterday, 
 and last month, and last year. Child, have you 
 forsworn change ? or are you clinging to the 
 insipid signs of maidenliness ? ' It was one of Fra's 
 aflectations to speak to Mary as a child, notwith- 
 standing the younger sister's loud reckoning of 
 the elder's seniority. For that matter Fra some- 
 times addressed her mother in the same terms, and 
 Mrs. Carteret reproved her daughter's licence 
 briskly, and smiled at the skit in her heart. 
 
 'Neither the one nor the other,' said Mary, 
 ' and certainly I did not wear this gown last 
 month, when we had the raw east wind ; I had too 
 much respect for my coming rheumatism. But I 
 don't believe Mr. Taff Penryn will ever cast a 
 glance at anything so trifling as girls' dress ; it is 
 more likely that he will engage papa in Shake- 
 spearian criticism, or, if he has a thought or a look 
 beyond it, it will be to ascertain whether a British 
 landowner has sufficient sense of comfort to have 
 his dinner table supplied with sour kraut.' 
 
 ' I should not wonder if you have been en- 
 quiring into cook's abihty in that respect,' sug- 
 gested Fra, with a happy guess. 
 
 ' Well, I did ask her whether she had any red
 
 74 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 cabbage left,' confessed Mary ; ' but she admits no 
 interference except mamma's in her dommion, 
 and is more strino-ent in her rules since the hours 
 of her reign here are numbered. She has never 
 forgiven me for wishing her to take pupils, or 
 allowing me to have them, in the hue of Cottage 
 Cookery. I am aft-aid she thought my present 
 enquiry a piece of unprovoked impertinence, 
 so she answered, " I should think, miss, I should 
 know when red caibbage is in season, which is my 
 biziness ; and which is not when sparrow grass 
 and rhubarb is plentiful." I have not even dared 
 to hint at strong coffee.' 
 
 ' You did not deserve to succeed in trespassing 
 on your inferior's preserves,' said Fra, in indolent 
 supercilious censure ; ' and do you know you are 
 really too young yet for setting up a rivalry in 
 base appeals to the lower animal ? Ah ! that's 
 papa's voice outside, and there is another man 
 speaking. He is come — the conquering hero — the 
 captive slave to be. Do let us have a peep at 
 him.' And Fra slipped nimbly from the chair on 
 which she was seated, in the act of looping up 
 her lace skirt with an impromptu garland of 
 Mary's beloved laburnum, and crouched down 
 on the floor behind the window-blind of the open 
 window, with only her chin above the sill. Lyd, 
 as a matter of course, followed her example, but 
 a little less agilely, so that a brush was knocked 
 down with a clatter which was heard without,
 
 BY THE ELBE. 75 
 
 and caused not merely her father but the stranger 
 to look up. 
 
 The catastrophe simply afforded Fra gratifica- 
 tion, as she ducked lower, pulhng Lyd down with 
 her, to the accompaniment of smothered laughter ; 
 while the only figure visible from the lawn was 
 Mary, in her white dress, standing immovable, 
 with heightened colour, in the breach. 
 
 ' For shame, Fra and Lyd, you are no longer 
 schoolgirls, even if such romping w^ere admissible 
 in well -tutored schoolgirls,' Mary protested, 
 without the least expectation that her protest 
 would be of any avail. 
 
 Fra, with all her pretensions and accomplish- 
 ments, not only condescended to slightly refined 
 bouncing and giggling, carrying Lyd with her — 
 the gnls went the length of glorying in their esca- 
 pades, as at once the evidence and the privilege 
 of this youth on which they set such store. 
 They showed none of the budding graces of that 
 womanliness for which they had no desire. 
 Reserve, dignity, even decorum, were words 
 which had no special womanly signification to 
 Fra, and, by her want of comprehension, they 
 failed also to reach Lyd. Fra desired to be 
 original, brilliant, to have ' go ' in her, to inspire 
 envy, and, if possible, fear, in other women ; 
 all this coexisted with a great amount of childish 
 levity and Avild giddy animal spirits. But as to 
 anything so slow, stupid, and goody-goody as to
 
 70 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 be filled with a growing sense of responsibility 
 and fitness, with a strenuous obligation to put — 
 not childlike, but childish things behind her, 
 conscious that even this world had such depth 
 and richness as would amply repay her for what 
 she relinquished — that there were higher and 
 purer joys in duty, Avork, and self-devotion than 
 in boisterous merriment or selfish ambition — all 
 this was what Fra had never dreamed of in her 
 shallow philosophy. This peeping out of the win- 
 dow, and sniggling over it, was bad enough ; but 
 Mary had known Fra capable of peej^ing out of the 
 door too, and that by no more legitimate a process 
 than stretching her slight figure prone on the ground 
 and protruding her fine nose just beyond the thres- 
 hold, where she would make her investigation to a 
 low accompaniment of tittering altogether undis- 
 coverable and inexplicable to the object tittered at. 
 
 Fra was utterly indifTerent to Mary's re- 
 monstrances, and fully successful in stifling in Lyd 
 any lingering sense of affront at her position, or 
 of self-reproach at behaving in a manner which 
 papa, who did not take much notice of girls, 
 might easily overlook, but which mamma would 
 decidedly condemn, however swiftly an amnesty 
 would follow on the condemnation. 
 
 Fra proceeded in her gracelessness to supply 
 Mary unasked with her unbiassed opinion of Mr. 
 Penryn's outward man, and to add a running 
 commentary on his gait and movements as he
 
 BY THE ELBE. ' 77 
 
 walked up and down, so far as the cumbered 
 lawn would permit, with Mr. Carteret. ' An in- 
 significant fellow, not an inch taller than papa is, 
 Polly. I like a six-foot-two man. I know he 
 runs the risk of being mistaken for a guardsman 
 or a footman, and that he is often deplorably 
 lanky when he is not a monster of flesh and blood ; 
 still I am inclined to ask quantity m a man and 
 quahty m a woman. Fair hair ^yithout fail, but 
 face not tallow-coloured or pasty in substance, or 
 like that of a brick pre- Adamite man — not even of 
 a Bath-brick man — with a very respectable brown 
 tan, considering the shade of his hair and 
 moustache. Quite a fierce moustache ; that is the 
 second point in his favour. But he has not, as 
 far as I can discern, a single scar of a sword-cut 
 on cheek or chin, cauij^ht in encounters with hosts 
 of rivals as he serenaded his whey-faced, whey- 
 haired Gretchen. I should not wonder if he were 
 to turn out a humbug. And, oh ! dear, he has 
 such high shoulders and such a ]^igeon breast, or 
 else it is the way in which his coat is made and 
 buttoned. His trousers are absurdly tight at 
 the ankles — a burlesque on the fashion ; and then 
 the manner his hat is worn on the back of his 
 head ! After all, I fancy he is not very eligible even 
 pour passer le temps and to bring us into flirting 
 practice. I don't suppose he is worth our lugging 
 out our second best bravery for, Lyd, unless it be 
 to teach us how to make war, my duck ; even a
 
 78 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 barbarian of a beggarly fantastic German student 
 may serve as a target for our aim.' 
 
 ' And what if the beggarly fantastic German 
 student be hit,' said Mary, thinking the catastrophe 
 not unlikely or unnatural as she looked at Fra, 
 rising bright, beaming, and wholly dauntless from 
 her ambush. 
 
 ' Oh, that would only be tlie fortune of war,' 
 answered Fra, carelessly.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 79 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 A MAX WHO DESPISED TO BE ENTEETAIXED. 
 
 Mary found herself — rather to her surprise, for 
 she had seen gh'ls far inferior to Fra in her kind 
 of attractiveness prove irresistibly charming, not 
 merely to empty foolish young men, sceptical of 
 all save their own merits, but even to older, more 
 serious, and, one would have thought, wiser indi- 
 viduals — a true prophet in her hasty random pre- 
 diction that Mr. TafFPenryn would not condescend 
 to anything so trifling as to girls' dress, not to say 
 sirls themselves. 
 
 The stranger was, on the first legitimate ob- 
 servation, a middle-sized fair-haired young man 
 of Mary's own age. He showed the Saxon side 
 of his descent by the flaxen in his hair and the 
 blue in his eyes. But he also showed the English 
 and the Cornish-English — for the Penryns had 
 come originally from Cornwall — in the com- 
 paratively small well-knit bones, the browner 
 tinge of the skin — which, in company with the fair 
 hair, gave the effect of a child that retains its 
 bleached lint-Avhitc mop while it is tanned to the
 
 80 , BY THE ELBE. 
 
 last extremity of tan under tlie light thatch — and 
 a nervous energy occasionally leaping out in tone 
 and gesture, balancing phlegm and dreaminess. 
 
 In spite of Fra's tirade on the defects of his 
 figure and costume, TafF Penryn was free from 
 slouching awkwardness or slovenly rusticity,-for 
 this reason that, being a naturalised German, he 
 had served his turn as a soldier and seen a little 
 of war. He might have been but a homely 
 working soldier contrasted with the smart dandy 
 soldiers of England, but martial service had at 
 least developed in him — what might otherwise have 
 been lacking — a man's muscles, a man's carriage 
 and activity, in addition to a close-cropped head 
 and reo;ulation moustache. Best of all, it had 
 brought the out-of-the-world, absorbed student 
 into closer contact with the realities of life, and 
 taught him to have a proper value for them. 
 
 Taff Penryn might be an entliusiast yet — no 
 regimen could cure him of that disease ; but he 
 was an enthusiast of harder, sterner, infinitely 
 more practicable stuff than he would have been 
 had he never marched for long drudging days, 
 encamped for short troubled nights, gone without 
 food or drink for three times the canonical hours, 
 shared his provisions with those worse off than 
 himself, been moved to discern and care actively 
 for his ov/n wants and those of his neighbours, 
 stood sternly under fire, and looked down ruefully 
 on dead men's faces. He had not been a mere
 
 BY THE ELBE. 81 
 
 ductile machine in skilful haude' — in no circum- 
 stances could he have been so, but he had pos- 
 sessed the patience and the though tfidness that had 
 done more than reconcile him to discipline purely 
 irksome in itself, they had enabled him to learn 
 all the good lessons which disciphne can teach. 
 
 There was also a great, manly, frank sim- 
 plicity about the young fellow which blended 
 happily with his constitutional reserve, and which 
 possibly tended to those occasional spurts of 
 eagerness, even fieriness, that contrasted so oddly 
 with the general calmness of his manner. 
 
 It was not on Shakespearian any more than on 
 Biblical criticism that young Penryn betrayed the 
 hot determination as well as the dogged earnest- 
 ness which lurked under his habitual coolness and 
 acquired self-control ; though it was on subjects 
 that appeared to Fra — always rash and daring in 
 her conclusions — even drier and dustier: on poli- 
 tical and social economy, on international rights, 
 on the protection and support afforded to in- 
 ventors, on inventions themselves, especially on 
 chemistr}' and mechanics. He had some dogmas 
 of his own on an affinity and union not yet suffi- 
 ciently recognised between mechanical power and 
 chemical force, and on splendid possibilities — 
 not unguessed in any age, but for the most i)art 
 derided and scouted in this — which they presented 
 for the future. lie did not hesitate to say of this 
 law, argument or documentary clause, or of 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 that combination, ' it lias been the work of short- 
 sighted selfishness overreaching itself in the end ;' 
 ' it is barefaced injustice and fraudulent mis- 
 appropriation, which, when the world is older and 
 wiser it will not submit to.' ' I know that there 
 are such effects, I have tried them for myself, and 
 I pledge myself for results, glorious in time.' 
 
 Notwithstanding this quiet audacity and per- 
 sistent self-confidence, his tone to Mr. Carteret was 
 perfectly respectful. Mary even fancied she also 
 detected in it a ring of gratitude, not thd less sin- 
 cere that it was, in order to meet the wishes of the 
 person most concerned, kept in the background. But 
 there was not a semblance of subjection ; there was 
 very little deference beyond what any fairly cour- 
 teous young man would show to a senior. It was 
 clear that this TafT Penryn had kept himself un- 
 trammelled in mind and ojDmiou, even as his father 
 had been free from any opinions, good or bad, and 
 had only followed where inclination led him. 
 
 The young man spoke English well, with 
 only a little overelaborate precision and the shade 
 of a foreign accent, which was not without its 
 pathos in a man revisiting the country in which 
 his forefathers had held a considerable stake, nay, 
 in a man sitting as a strange guest at a table where, 
 if his father had chosen, the son might have sat 
 as host. 
 
 Mr. Carteret listened to the lad's talk which 
 the senior drew forth, with a somewhat languid
 
 BY THE ELBE. 8 
 
 o 
 
 but genuine interest, in winch, good man tliougli 
 he was, some bitter covetousness mingled. ' Why 
 should my lads have been what they are, when 
 Taff Penryn, who I could swear never did anything 
 in particular for his son, save bring him into the 
 w^orld, in which he left him scantily provided 
 for, leaves an heir to his general insolvency such 
 as this young fellow ? If I had known that Ger- 
 man simplicity and frugality had this end, I might 
 have expatriated myself to some purpose twenty 
 years sooner.' 
 
 Mrs. Carteret only roused herself to ascertain 
 that this second TafF Penryn bore little resemblance 
 to the first, and that he was not laying himself out to 
 please the girls — indeed, he appeared to her a stiff, 
 pedantic, indifferent young man ; then she forgot 
 all about him in the multiplicity of her concerns. 
 She had never been able to own that obligation to 
 the father which, once owned, would have disposed 
 her to take the son to her heart. She was a woman 
 in whom, though intrinsically true, the faculty of 
 blinding herself to the truth existed to a large ex- 
 tent. In this respect she was the reverse of her 
 Imsband, and even of Mary, who had by nature 
 troublesomely, even depressingly wide open mental 
 eyes, that took in both sides of a question, and 
 which no partiality, any more than any hypocrisy, 
 could seal fast. 
 
 Mary liked to listen to those never exhausted 
 questions of large, if not of primary, import on 
 
 G 2
 
 84 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 which her father and tlie Anolo-German hiiinched 
 forth. The sound of them seemed to extend her 
 own horizon and stirred her with a refreshing and 
 bracing effect, though she was as ignorant as a 
 baby, she was ready to confess with quick self- 
 reproach, of either chemistry or mechanics. 
 
 As for Fra, she w^as sure it was foreio:n bosh. 
 She had seen ever so many chemical experiments 
 performed by MissBi^adshaw'sown private professor 
 at her school. She liad looked at, listened to, and 
 stood them with credit as became one of the fore- 
 most girls in the school examination. She had been 
 instructed in enough of the laws of mechanics to 
 enable her to take the prize in natural philosophy. 
 But she had never observed for herself, or heard 
 from others, instances of dawning marvels such as 
 these hinted at. Many of these Germans were 
 either dupes or impostors. There was her music 
 master, who, though he played and sang divinelj', 
 believed in the world's going back to primitive con- 
 ditions, in every man, woman, and child working 
 with their hands, eating when they were hungry, and 
 drinking when they were thirsty, and in language 
 itself and musical laws being reduced to first prin- 
 ciples and practices, so that he should have to call 
 a sheep or schaf a baa-baa, and to sigh into a reed 
 in order to produce harmony. And there was her 
 German master, who tried all sorts of tricks on 
 his dog to see if it could be brought to think, and 
 on liis child to see if it could be induced to bark
 
 BY THE ELBE. 85 
 
 instead of to liowl, as a natural utterance of its 
 feelings. 
 
 But Fra was not impartial; she was the essence 
 of coquetry and love of power. Notwithstanding 
 her slender estimation of Taff Penryn at the 
 first peep, and her cool conviction tliat no man 
 in his circumstances was worth a sensible girl's 
 serious thought, she desired to attract him to her, 
 were it only for the evening. She wished to show 
 her girlish supremacy, though the spectators were 
 limited to her father and mother, Mary, Lyd, and 
 Mrs. Penfeather, who counted as nobody with Fra. 
 She longed for the satisfaction of at once conquer- 
 ing this stray antagonist, as an earnest of a host of 
 others, immensely superior in person, manners, and 
 estate — for heart and mind, undoubtedly clever as 
 Fra was, went very little way in her criticism. She 
 was farther im]:)elled to cultivate the acquaintance 
 of Mr. Penryn by learning that he had been a 
 soldier in the late Franco-German war. She had 
 not thought of the probability of this finish to his 
 education ; but, in spite of the omission, she had 
 an entirely girlish and extravagant conception of 
 the gain it was for a man to be a soldier. The 
 hollow show and sound of the profession, with what 
 it has of vulgar sensationalism, had a stronghold on 
 her imagination, a hold which her cleverness and 
 practicality could not entirely shake off. It was not 
 tliat she prized a brave man the more for his tried 
 braver}' ; but that red coats, helmets, and feathers
 
 86 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 flashed and floated agreeably before lier mind's 
 eye. They were to her synonymous with a position 
 equal in state, though not in substance, to that of a 
 squire at least. As to the other side of a soldier's 
 life, according to the manner in which Fra wildly 
 and ignorantly pictured it — the licence, the excite- 
 ment, the dash and crash and climax of horror, 
 that had a charm also for what was coarse-grained 
 in the girl. She had been too carefully nurtured 
 to have read largely one class of novels cropping 
 up more or less in this and in every generation ; 
 but without having had their heroes depicted to 
 her in glowing and violent colours, she had an in- 
 stinctive preference for these heroes' attributes. 
 
 Fra was intensely piqued to And Mary's cold- 
 blooded prognostication prove substantially correct. 
 TafF Penryn hardly looked at Fra any more 
 than at Mary or Lyd. He was not to be smitten by 
 the first dazzling sparkle of her presence ; he was 
 not to be disturbed by her ill-mannered whispering 
 and grhnacing to Lyd. He looked up, glancing 
 across the table at her from under his not too flaxen 
 eyebrows and eyelashes, when she made some of her 
 contradictory and unique observations. For Fra 
 was the soul of contradictorhiess, and if she was 
 not unique she was nothing. Thus she main- 
 tained that she enjoyed and throve on a draught 
 of air, or that green was a colour which always 
 tried and distressed her eyes — and then she fol- 
 loAved up a little warm praise of Mary's, given to a
 
 BY THE ELBE 87 
 
 point in the neighbouring scenery on wliicli the 
 conversation had tm-ned, by a plaintive entreat}^, 
 'Don't gush, Mary dear, nobody does so now-a-days, 
 therefore it is a great deal of trouble wasted.' 
 
 But Fra herself had the shrewdness to distin- 
 guish that the looks which she had drawn from 
 Tail Penryn were entirely those of mystification, 
 and not to be followed by looks of admiration, 
 growing^with the magical rapidity of Jack of tlie 
 Bean Stalk's vegetable in the night. Taff Penryn 
 was clearly saying to himself, wherein was his 
 English deficient that he could not make out this 
 girl's talk? That was all. 
 
 Fra called in the aid of her music, one of her 
 grand arms of assault as well as pieces de resistance^ 
 to be plied on this sluggish German the moment 
 she had retired to the drawing-room. Consider- 
 ing his antecedents and national predilections, she 
 ought to have been successful there. 
 
 But either Taff Penryn had been accustomed 
 to hear music which went to his heart, while this 
 bravura execution only tinkled in his ears, or his 
 Enghsh side had prevailed over his German half 
 and his German rearing, and he was, for a wonder, 
 not musical. Any way he was in no haste to 
 leave the dining-room, though he would not taste 
 Mr. Carteret's port, and liad preferred his host's 
 claret to his sherry. When he did make his en- 
 trance, he did not approach the piano with its 
 marshalled tempest of soimd, but sat down by
 
 8S BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather, for whom lie had shown the only 
 gallant preference that he was brought to testify. 
 That, as anybody could guess, was not because 
 of a timid or blase leaning to a mature matron 
 and widow who was beyond the thought of second 
 wifehood. It was because she had happened to say 
 something, in the course of conversation at dinner, 
 of ancient Indian looms and Indian dyes. 
 
 ' Lyd, come and play a duet with me and 
 deafen that short-sighted bear,' Fra invited her 
 younger sister in a whisper of Avrathful disdain. 
 Lyd was not slow to obey the invitation, 
 while she provoked Fra by her alarmed specula- 
 tions, whether all young German men ^vould 
 be as dull and priggish as this example, and got 
 scolded at the same time for her lialting bass. 
 
 In the meanwdiile, tlie woman entirely at 
 leisure in the company, Mrs. Penfeather, had taken 
 in the scene, the relations of the parties, and the 
 byplay with much interest and amusement, which 
 were not lessened by the fact that she had a dim 
 idea, from what she recollected of ancient gossip 
 and from her own observation, of the species of 
 obligation, half-painful, which bound Mr. Carteret 
 toTafFPenryn. 
 
 She understood, from her power of sympathy 
 quite as much as from her knowledge of German life 
 and character, better than anyone else present. — 
 not excepting Mr. Carteret — the kind of young 
 man Penryn was, and his position with regard
 
 BY THE ELBE. " 89 
 
 to the other persons present. ' He is a student, 
 more of nature than of books. He has not 
 awakened yet, if he ever will awaken, to the place 
 that a woman — one woman — mig-ht have in his 
 history. He is as ignorant of women as a 
 baby ; and it is that hopeless ignorance of partial 
 familiarity, not the total ignorance which is 
 easily thrilled with the sense of novelty and the 
 first conception of possibilities. Very hkely he 
 has had a brother and sister familiarity with 
 dozens of good-humoured, musical, housekeeping 
 daughters of old professors with whom he was a 
 favourite — fellow-professors of the grandfather 
 of whom I heard him speak to Mr. Carteret — and 
 sisters of bosom friends. The familiarity has bred 
 not contempt — he looks too manly and kindly 
 for that — but simply indifferent goodwill. If ever 
 the idea of a woman as a power has crossed his 
 mind, it is of some grandly perfect, beneficent 
 creature like Goethe's Dorothea — the queenly 
 peasant-woman, who, in her purity and single- 
 heartedness is strong enough, brave enough, and 
 nobly humble enough to help and serve all, great 
 and small ; or at least of some figure as stately in 
 her simplicity as Irmgard, the king's daughter, 
 whom Ingo the Vandal finds among her maidens 
 superintending the last milking, butter-making, 
 and cheese-storing at the summer pasture. What 
 chance has the reality of a modern accomplished 
 girl against the visions of such human divinities ?
 
 90 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 I can see that my young philospher is tempted to 
 look with a critical and condemning eye on the 
 luxuries and ceremonious habits of civilised life 
 in a country house in England. He turns back 
 longingly to his carpetless, scantily furnished Ger- 
 man rooms, early frugal dinners, and free-and-easy 
 suppers, as more consonant with hard study, high 
 thinking, and the delights of friendly intercourse. 
 Our crowd of comforts and refinements, stifling and 
 imprisoning, have no charms for him ; he is at 
 once too hardy and too earnest in his aims. And 
 he laughs at our strictures on foreign rudeness and 
 boorishuess. He makes the concession to the drops 
 of Enghsh blood in his veins, and his probably 
 unconsciously inherited English traditions, as well 
 as to his freer intercourse with English people, of 
 doing in England as the English do, and of not 
 startling and offending Mrs. Carteret by putting 
 his knife into his mouth or proceeding to light 
 his cigar at table. But he would have his own 
 sturdy and able defence — supposing he were called 
 upon to defend them — of these objectionable 
 practices, if I read aright the proud unblenching 
 gleam of his blue eye. He would tell us that as 
 the circumstance of the German and Vandal foot — 
 with the point turning outwards and the ball of 
 the foot pressing strongly downwards — while the 
 Eomans stepped with small foot and short step 
 on the whole sole, like weary people, implied the 
 final supremacy of the Gothic races, so the cool
 
 BY THE ELBE. 91 
 
 and safe application of the knife to a convenient 
 use and the frank and fearless indulgence in the 
 precious weed are but so many proofs of the 
 unfaihng nature of German intrepidity and skill, 
 and of that rugged truth and dauntless simplicity 
 on which, so far as he derives a share in them from 
 his maternal ancestors, he is inclined to boast. 
 But he is still purblind where girls and women 
 are concerned. He does not even see that there 
 is any difference in this family; he classes Mary 
 and Fra and Lyd all together ; he would not know 
 one from another or recognise her at all if he 
 ever saw her again. The Carterets are alike idle 
 fme ladies, and fantastic frivolous girls to him. 
 Oh ! my young hero, you are very bhnd.' 
 
 When Taff Penryn found that he could reach 
 Sandford station by train late that night, and that 
 he should have greater advantages in availing 
 himself of the order whicli Mr. Carteret could 
 procure for him to see the chemical works on his 
 property, if the visitor applied for admission early 
 in tlie morning, he decided at once on taking 
 leave of his host and hostess. 
 
 There was no lure sufficient to cause him to pro- 
 tract his stay, even to the term originally proposed 
 of remaining over the night. Ease, relaxation, and 
 the company of young people like himself — 
 albeit they were girls — had evidently no effect 
 on modifying Taff Fenryn's scientific zeal. 
 
 Such a preference of serious business to lighter
 
 92 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 enjoyment in winch the weaker sex count for 
 something is apt to be distasteful to young 
 women, above all when the preference is shown 
 by young men. It put the crown on Taff Penryn's 
 deficiencies and misdeeds in Fra Carteret's eyes. 
 
 Notwithstanding, after his departure she was 
 not above betraying her disgust at such utter stoli- 
 dity by stretching herself on the most comfortable 
 couch, regardless of the irritation which any 
 sign of laziness and self-indulgence in a girl did 
 not fail to produce in her punctilious unresting 
 mother. Fra prepared, in supercilious silence which 
 took no note of Mrs. Penfeather's presence, to 
 console herself by her own thoughts or dreams, 
 in lieu of a sufficiently entertaining book, which 
 did not happen to be within her reach. 
 
 Fra's high spirits were fitful in their very 
 height, and were apt to alternate with corre- 
 sponding depths which certainly were short lived 
 as yet. She neither saw nor owned any obliga- 
 tion* to veil or repress her changes of mood, to 
 contribute to family cheerfulness, and to solace 
 parental cares. She was a young girl, and there- 
 fore she was an irresponsible being, who was 
 to follow her inclinations, wherever they led. In 
 some respect she was like Mr. Taff Penryn in his 
 pursuit of knowledge. 
 
 Lyd was more tractable, but unfortunately her 
 tractability showed itself at present in making a
 
 BY THE ELBE. 93 
 
 close copy of Fra's behaviour ; so Lyd prepared 
 to fill an easy chair and gape in concert. 
 
 ' I am afraid a good deal of the spirit of our 
 party has gone with the gentlemen,' said Mrs. 
 Penfeather, with dancing eyes, when Mr. Carteret 
 had left the room to stroll with yoraig Penryn to 
 the station, and the young girls had disposed 
 themselves as has been described. 'It is a pity 
 that we poor women cannot be more independent,' 
 added Mrs. Penfeather, meekly. 
 
 ' My dear Celia, I am not aware that I am 
 more talkative in the presence of my husband, or 
 of any other man, than in his absence,' Mrs. 
 Carteret defended herself literally and a little 
 indignantly. 
 
 ' We are only summoning up our spent forces,' 
 protested Mary, merrily. ' Mrs. Penfeather, I am 
 going to engage you, and beat you to boot, in a 
 game of bezique.' 
 
 'And if you think, Mrs. Penfeather, that I 
 derived any grain of excitement from a mass of 
 German conceit, you are very much mistaken,' 
 said Fra, suddenly starting up from the sofa and 
 from her musings. 
 
 ' Oh ! Mrs. Penfeather,' Lyd chimed in, play- 
 ing the part of enfant terrible, and proceeding to 
 speak out what was in her mind wdth unvarnished 
 plainness, ' do you think that we are really vexed 
 because Mr. Penryn has hardly looked at or 
 spoken to us ? You are quite wrong ; I would 
 scorn to care.'
 
 94 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 'And so would I, Lyd,' granted Mrs. Pen- 
 feather. 'Fanny, I have not got over my old 
 trick of teasing, which would better become your 
 girls. Forgive me for being impertinent and 
 naughty. Won't you show your magnanimity by 
 playing with Mary and me, you two others ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, pray excuse us,' said Fra, shrugging her 
 shoulders ; ' Lyd and I played bezique till we got 
 sick of it, during our holidays.' 
 
 ' Oh, pray excuse us,' echoed Lyd, with a little 
 hankering glance at the cards. 
 
 ' You must understand they exhausted bezique 
 when you and I were in our cradles, in spite 
 of their superior juvenility,' explained Mary. 
 ' It does not do to be too consistent ; or is it be- 
 cause Young England is quite above indoor games ? 
 Papa and I are such wasters of our time and our 
 wits, that we sometimes sit down to play whist 
 when we can persuade mamma to join us, for we 
 have not got the length of double dummies. And 
 we often challenge each other to draughts, since 
 we play chess so inequally that it degenerates into 
 a mere lesson from papa to me.' 
 
 ' You know that I am exceedingly fond of 
 billiards, Polly,' said Fra, recovering her airiness. 
 
 ' And pray don't say Young England, Mary,' 
 objected her mother ; ' it is a man's phrase, and 
 refers to men. I don't see what it has to do in a 
 girl's mouth.' 
 
 At that moment Mr. Carteret returned, looking
 
 BY THE ELBE. 95 
 
 fago-ed, even by his short walk, and threw himself 
 with an air of relief into his chair. 
 
 Mary looked up, half expecting him to say a 
 word in commendation of their late guest, who 
 had possessed more than one source of interest 
 for her, though he had not repaid her interest in 
 kind. Instead, Mr. Carteret exclaimed, ' I am 
 thankfid I have got quit of that fellow ; he is an 
 idiot — a lunatic' 
 
 Mary stopped short in dealing the cards in 
 utter amazement, Mrs. Penfeather stared, and 
 Mrs. Carteret cried out, ' Good Heavens, John, 
 was there anything wrong with the young man — 
 why did you let him come here ? ' And Lyd, who 
 was naturally an arrant coward, gasped instead of 
 gaping, and grew faint, but had still sufficient 
 strength left to look to her prompter for her cue. 
 
 ' Oh, not so bad as that, papa,' said Fra, w^ith 
 her inveterate contradictoriness ; ' he is a dolt, I 
 daresay, with all his show of information — I 
 always distrust sententious people ; he is comically 
 disagreeable ; but as for being out of any mind he 
 
 may have ' 
 
 ' Hold your tongue, Fra,' said Mr, Carteret, 
 moved beyond his usual sufferance, ' you know 
 nothing about it. He actually believes in the 
 possibility of discovering perpetual motion, and 
 means to set himself to the task, in which case he 
 will die a maniac as well as a bej^gar. When I 
 told him that he might as fitly set out, at this
 
 96 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 time of day, in search of Eldorado, or in pursuit of 
 the philosopher's stone, he answered quite mildly 
 — though I suspect he is as hot as he is wrong- 
 headed when he is once fairly roused — that he 
 gave up Eldorado, as the world had been sailed and 
 journeyed over — he was good enough to admit 
 principally by English enterprise — in all directions. 
 But as for the philosopher's stone, we had only 
 to find that gold was not an elementary body, 
 while many of our supposed elements had proved 
 compounds, and there was the old philosopher's 
 feat perfectly possible, though he for one did 
 not care to attain to it. It was only the compara- 
 tive scarcity of gold and its value as a mode of 
 currency which rendered it w^orth. Of course I 
 knew that before he was born ; but all the same, 
 the lad is stark, staring mad.' 
 
 ' But, papa,' Mary began to urge, not in the 
 perverse contradiction of Era, but with a light of 
 Avistful speculation in her eyes, ' were not all the 
 destined discoverers of the past looked upon by 
 their contemporaries as madmen ? ' 
 
 However, there was a limit to Mr. Carteret's 
 liberality, and he drew the line considerably on 
 this side of perpetual motion. ' Nonsense, Mary,' 
 he said testily, for he had been taken aback and 
 disturbed by what had occurred ; ' wild, vain 
 dreams which no man of sense can cherish, which 
 experience and common sense have always com- 
 bined to disprove, may well be taken as beyond
 
 BY THE ELBE. 97 
 
 proof; our faculties are within bounds here, at 
 least, and even a rational child begins soon — and 
 the sooner the better — to distinguish these bounds. 
 When a man's imagination is not balanced by his 
 reason he is a fool, and on the road to become a 
 madman.' 
 
 ' Of course this young Penryn must be mad,' 
 said Mrs. Carteret, without a doubt. ' What a 
 blessing that he conducted himself, I must say, 
 like other people dinging dinner, and that he went 
 away of his own accord, quietly ; and what a good 
 thing that he did not come over from Germany 
 years ago — I think you once talked of inviting 
 him, without any great need — and infect the boys 
 with his harebrained notions.' 
 
 ' No great danger of that,' said ]\Ir. Carteret, 
 shortly, with a revulsion of feeling. 
 
 'A dazed, daft German schemer, who will 
 propose to give us wings next,' said Fra, with a 
 light scorn, as if she could accurately measure and 
 assign a place to the species. 
 
 But Mary could not so easily give up the 
 romance of the young man, who in this nineteenth 
 century was chivalrously — or was it deliriously ? — 
 ready to wear out his life and dash out his brains 
 against the unsolved problem of perpetual motion, 
 and who still had a word to say for the finding of 
 the philosopher's stone. It was not that the pit- 
 ting one's hand upon the last, were the secret 
 imparted to a friend, might compass a deliverance, 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 clear the lands [of the Warren of their debts, and 
 preserve to her father and his family their home 
 and country. Mary really forgot that personal 
 consideration at the moment, in spite of her late 
 longing to transmute living into dead gold. It 
 was the wish to keep her faith in the world's 
 inexhaustible freshness of resource and never- 
 failing kingdoms to conquer. It was her eager- 
 ness to convince herself that she had seen in the 
 erect, staid, almost stiff young German — with his 
 brown face and his flaxen hair, his concentration 
 of purpose and his tinge of dogmatism, which 
 might in truth be fanaticism — one of those con- 
 querors of kingdoms, deliverers of captives, leaders 
 and pioneers of whom she had thought so much, 
 but whom, as if they had been so many Greek 
 heroes, she had hardly hoped to see with her own 
 eyes. She had expected, least of all, to have the 
 experience in her own quiet country home, where 
 the quarter sessions, the last run of the hounds, 
 the wheat, the peaches, the cricket and the cro- 
 quet, the first shot of September, the church rates, 
 the last coming-of-age party, or Sunday school 
 feast, were about the utmost stretch of topics that 
 anybody, except herself and her father, cared to 
 discuss. 
 
 ' Mrs. Penfeather,' said Mary, in a side appeal, 
 ' do you think that a man must be insane who 
 still tries to remove the hitches that prevent 
 perpetual motion ? '
 
 BY THE ELBE. 99 
 
 ' I am not prepared to speak to liis sanity,' 
 said Mrs. Penfeather ; ' but,' she added consolingly, 
 * I think I have known men who, in trying to 
 seize the moon, have inadvertently, as it were, got 
 a gas-lamp for themselves and their neighbours.' 
 
 h2
 
 100 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MART AXD MRS. PENFEATHER SPY THE LAND AT 
 
 SANDFORD. 
 
 There seemed a fate against the Carterets quitting 
 the Warren at the time appointed, though none 
 knew better or shrunk more than Mr. Carteret 
 from the unmitigated evil of prolonged leave- 
 taking. The head of the house was seized with an 
 inopportune, aggravated fit of gout, on tlie back 
 of Taff Penryn's passing visit, and on the eve of 
 the Squire of the Warren's making an imperatively- 
 necessary closing investigation at Sandford — a 
 separate portion of the considerable extent of land 
 which Mr. Carteret had himself farmed — before he 
 gave over farms and baihff to the coming tenant 
 who was to be the landlord's successor in the 
 active management of a third of the estate. 
 
 On the one hand, it was evident that if Mr. 
 Carteret ventured beyond his lawn against the 
 express orders of his doctor, at the present stage 
 of his illness, it was probable that he would 
 induce a still more severe — nay dangerous attack, 
 which might disable him for many weeks from
 
 BY THE ELBE. 101 
 
 prosecuting with his family the journey which 
 had the search for a home as its object. 
 
 On the other hand, it was equally plain that if 
 Mr. Carteret deferred taking Kit Must's extraor- 
 dinary and ravelled accounts off the man's hand, 
 and seeing in a general way that the offices, stock, 
 and crop were in the state that the departing 
 proprietor intended them to be, then Mr. Carteret 
 must also defer his departure, and write and put 
 off the tenant's taking possession. 
 
 'If somebody could only go for you, papa,' 
 said Mary persuasively, as she and her mother 
 were talking over the matter one evening with the 
 impatient invalid, in his dressing-room. 
 
 ' There is nobody,' said Mrs. Carteret ; ' I am 
 sure you know that, Mary, since poor Eegy and 
 Tom are at the ends of the earth ; their services 
 are missed now, though they were not greatly 
 prized when we could command them.' 
 
 ' Let me go,' said Mary boldly ; ' I have been far 
 oftener at Sandford with papa than either Eegy 
 or Tom ever was. I know very nearly how every- 
 thing — fields and animals — should look at this 
 season ; I have written down Kit Must's accounts 
 from his hieroglyphics and from his dictation during 
 the autumn when papa's wrist was sprained. You 
 said, papa, that the accounts were fiiirly written out. 
 You suffered me to add them up also, and you were 
 satisfied with the arithmetic. I am not a bad clerk 
 and accountant for a gu'l — you have owned that —
 
 102 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 thanks to my having the benefit of the boys' tutor 
 before they went to school, and to my first gover- 
 ness's having had the ambition to share in the work 
 of a preparatory boys' school kept by her brother, 
 a seventh wrangler.' 
 
 ' Are you out of your mind, Mary ? ' her mother 
 sought to put her down ; ' what sort of bailifi^s 
 work can be looked for in a young lady ? Why, 
 I have even heard your father hesitate to give a 
 renewal of the leases of farms to farmers' widows, 
 and farmers' daughters, who had been bred to 
 business — country business, from their infancy and 
 heard and seen nothing else all their lives.' 
 
 ' I don't know that I was right there, as men 
 go,' said the troubled Squire. 
 
 ' And I am sure,' said Mary, a little passion- 
 ately and defiantly, for the gud's heart was sore 
 on this very point, ' that if I have no country 
 knowledge, or capacity for working out accounts, 
 I do not know what I am fit for. I am a full- 
 grown woman, and yet, if papa did not keep me, I 
 could not keep myself, far less anybody who de- 
 pended upon me, in bare bread. I could not teach 
 much, and the governess ranks are so overstocked 
 that I should not have a chance for what little I 
 could teach, I should starve if I sought to maintain 
 myself by embroidery ; I have not the faintest 
 symptoms of the genius which might enable me 
 to make the world better and happier while I 
 made myself richer as an artist or an author,
 
 BY THE ELBE 103 
 
 even if tlie artist and author world, narrow as it 
 is, were not also overpopulous.' 
 
 ' I do not know what you are talking of,' 
 interposed Mrs. Carteret ; ' there is no question of 
 your keeping yourself ; what have you to do with 
 working for your bread ? are you not a gentle- 
 woman ? have you not your father and me ? ' 
 
 ' Gentlewomen have had to work for their 
 bread before now, Fanny,' said Mr. Carteret 
 gravely ; ' and as for you and me, not only will 
 Mary and the rest fail to have us always to stand 
 between them and hard necessity, it is on the 
 cards that, though we are spared, we may live to 
 prove but an inefficient screen. My affairs are not 
 in a flourishing state — you are all aware of that — 
 and these are not the best of times for landowners. 
 It only remains for the coming tenant who takes 
 off my hands the two best farms whicli I kept in 
 my own possession to be as unlucky and incapable 
 as I have been, to lose his head and his means, 
 and end by becoming insolvent — there i.s simply 
 wanting a flood or a fire — are they so unex- 
 ampled that we should not anticipate them ? — and 
 I do not see how we could afford to live together 
 abroad in the quietest way.' 
 
 ' And I do not see the good of conjuring up 
 additional and extraordinary misfortunes,' insisted 
 Mrs. Carteret ; ' but if the worst should come to 
 the worst we could go to Tom and Regy ; ' her
 
 104 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 face softened and even acquired a gleam of glad- 
 ness at the idea, 
 
 Mr. Carteret looked at lier silently. "Was there 
 any use — would there not be inhumanity — in seek- 
 ing to shake the mother's incredulity in her sons' 
 incapacity? 
 
 ' You are right so far,' he o-ranted with a sicfh ; 
 ' there is no advantage in forestalling disaster. But 
 I should like to say this much in reference to the 
 future, and to the poor old Warren, which is 
 still ours nominally. I hope and trust,' and 
 here he spoke slowly and emphatically, ' that the 
 boys will seek to carve out their own fortunes, 
 whatever these may be, in the new countries 
 they have resorted to ; that they will be cured of 
 their most mischievous inclination to lean upon 
 another, though that other be a father and the 
 holder of a few acres of land. I have apprised 
 both Eegy and Tom that the Warren, which is in 
 my own power as it was in my predecessor's, will 
 become after my death the portion of my widow 
 and my daughters if they survive me and re- 
 main unmarried. I may add that I look to you, 
 Mary, whom I have — for my own pleasure at 
 first, I confess — trained to have some intelligent ap- 
 preciation of country interests, and a fair amount of 
 business habits, to do what you can to manage the 
 place and make it remunerative for the mainte- 
 nance of your mother and sisters.' 
 
 Mary was naturall}^ touched and impressed.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 105 
 
 lyirs. Carteret was not so much offended by 
 this flagrant instance of Mr. Carteret's making an 
 eldest son of Mary, as she was scaudaHsed at the 
 infringement of estabHshed standards. But even 
 the scandal she felt, was held in check by the 
 solemnity that steals over the audience which is 
 called on to listen to a speaker who, whether in 
 health or in sickness, calmly and confidentially 
 narrates his views and wishes with regard to his 
 family and his estate after he shall be removed 
 from all active intervention in their affairs. She 
 was also smitten with sharp pain, for she loved 
 her husband, though she could not understand 
 him, and he had drifted away fi^om her. 
 
 It was not inconsistent with the awe and ache 
 at her heart that ]\Irs. Carteret should speak with 
 greater asperity than ever as she sought to turn 
 the conversation into lighter channels. 
 
 ' I hope Mary will vindicate your good opinion,' 
 she said, very much as if her fear exceeded her 
 hope ; ' but, for my part, I have little faith in 
 women who outstep their own province. They 
 have quite enough to engage them there, if they 
 discharge their obligations faithfully. As to that 
 first governess of yours. Miss Hurst, Mary, in 
 arranging a number of papers I have just come 
 across some letters of hers to your father. I was 
 amazed and indignant to find that there was incor- 
 rect spelhng in these letters ; believe spelt with the 
 second e before the z, and coolly — when she had
 
 106 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 coolly considered some point — with one / ; vulgar 
 errors in common spelling in a governess, not a 
 mere nursery governess, but one receiving a liberal 
 salary for occupying a position of trust and re- 
 sponsibility in a gentleman's family ! I leave you 
 to draw your own inference whether Miss Hurst 
 would not have been better employed minding her 
 own spelling and writing — she wrote an ugly 
 cramped hand, which any village schoolmistress 
 might easily have surpassed — than in promoting her 
 ridiculous scheme of teaching Latin and mathe- 
 matics for her brother, the wrangler, who must 
 have had as little sense as his sister had.' 
 
 ' It was a trick of spelling, a failing which Miss 
 Hurst shared in common with many great men,' 
 asserted Mary. ' She had the making of a great 
 woman in her, if women were allowed to be 
 great, which was the reason why a village school- 
 mistress could have surpassed her in copperplate 
 writing. I never learnt so much from any other 
 teacher ; and she was so tolerant and merry with 
 it all, used to laugh so heartily at my blunders, 
 and was so fond of kittens. And that school of hers 
 and her brother's,' continued Mary, showing a 
 freedom of grammatical construction worthy of 
 Miss Hurst herself, ' has been dehghtfully success- 
 ful ; why, it is quite famous.' 
 
 ' I don't give much for such fame,' said Mrs. 
 Carteret. ' I was very glad to get quit of Miss 
 Hurst, who, though she was not vulgar, was essen-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 107 
 
 tially unfeminine, and therefore unladylike. Her 
 intentions were not bad, I admit that ; and yet I 
 will never cease to regret having subjected you, 
 while still a child spoilt by your father, to so 
 pernicious an influence.' 
 
 Mary was tempted to ask whether it was her 
 spelling or her morals which her mother feared 
 had suffered the most from the contamination of 
 Miss Hurst's preceptorship, but she refrained, and 
 her father spoke. 
 
 ' I really wish I could accept your offer, Mary, 
 or that you could make it good,' he said. 'It will 
 be a serious inconvenience as well as a great an- 
 noyance to me if we cannot start by tlie 20th of 
 this month. I dare say you coidd take down Kit 
 Must's accounts better than a stranger not accus- 
 tomed to his ingenious but intricate method, and 
 that you could make an intelligible report of the 
 state of matters so that I might amend anything that 
 was grossly wrong before I resigned my charge.' 
 
 ' I never heard of a young lady doing such a 
 thing,' complained Mrs. Carteret, more tartly than 
 ever ; ' and it is clear that Mary cannot go over 
 and live even two or three days alone with Mrs. 
 Must and her son. There is another of your pro- 
 teges, Mr. Carteret, who cannot keep an account 
 like anybody else's steward. Am I to understand 
 that, in the style of Miss Hurst, he is above work- 
 ing by the rule of three and employing legible 
 characters.'
 
 108 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ' Kather below it, poor fellow, so far as educa- 
 tion goes,' answered Mr. Carteret ; ' but mother 
 wit is before education, and I have never had 
 reason to regret putting Kit at his post. The 
 new tenant, if he has any nous, will retain Kit's 
 services. I wish all my other experiments had 
 answered half as well. There has been little 
 sopped hay or shaken grain, and not a case of 
 rinderpest since Kit was my right-hand man.' 
 
 Mrs. Carteret was not attending to him ; her 
 mind was wandering away to her right-hand 
 woman, if she could be said to admit of such a 
 functionary. ' At least even you will allow that 
 Mary could not go over and remain by herself at 
 Sandford on this mad errand of taking an account 
 of Kit Must's stewardship,' said Mrs. Carteret, 
 meaning to cut the matter short. 
 
 ' Could not you go with her ? ' suggested Mr. 
 Carteret. 
 
 ' And you ill and helpless ! ' said his wife, re- 
 proachfully, ' even if there were not the house 
 to close here, the last touches to be put to the 
 packing, and some parting calls which, in spite of 
 all that I have been able to say, have been left to 
 the end. Utterly impossible, John ! ' exclaimed 
 his wife, energetically. At the same time she began 
 to experience sundry twinges of alarm. She had 
 been accustomed to defer to Mr. Carteret's wishes, 
 while he allowed her great independence in her 
 own line, and while she retained her individuality
 
 BY THE ELBE. 109 
 
 intact. She knew of old that when he once adopted 
 a purpose it was hard to turn him from it, how- 
 ever preposterous it might appear in her eyes. 
 Even she was reduced to temporise to ensure her 
 own exemption from removal, at the very time 
 she was most required, from her proper sphere 
 and her clamorous duties, by beginning to say, 
 doubtfully, 'If Mary likes to take upon her so 
 strange a commission, which is far out of a girl's 
 way, and of which I should think she will make a 
 mess ' 
 
 ' I have eyes in my head as well as another, 
 even as well as a man,' pleaded Mary. ' In ad- 
 dition to making out Kit Must's 8's and 6's, and 
 being able to follow his system of division, I can 
 see what fences are giving way and what gates are 
 broken, I can tell how the wheat looks in this field 
 or that, and I may give a shrewxl guess whether 
 the potatoes are springing, though the crops have 
 ceased to be papa's. I can count every horse and 
 ox, and the very cocks and hens ; what is to 
 hinder me ? ' asked Mary, impatiently. 
 
 ' It is to relieve your father's mind, that is the 
 only excuse,' said Mrs. Carteret. ' Perhaps Mrs. 
 Penfeather might accompany you ; it would be a 
 little change for Celia, and I could depend upon 
 her as upon myself.' 
 
 So it was arranged, to the comfort of Mr. Car- 
 teret and the content of Mary, who, in addition to 
 the pride of being of use and the joy of serving
 
 110 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 her father, wished to see Sandford again, and 
 rather hked the company of Mrs. Penfeather, 
 though, according to an instinct of humanity, she 
 had been shghtly set against her at first by her 
 mother's high commendations of Mrs. Penfeather's 
 conduct and manners as a model for all succeeding 
 generations of women. And Mrs. Penfeather was 
 not displeased with the arrangement, though she 
 seriously debated within herself whether she ought 
 not to warn Fanny that she was not the supremely 
 safe person that Fanny took her for. But she dis- 
 missed the necessity with the promise to herself 
 that she would take as good — perhaps better — care 
 of Mary as though she, Mrs. Penfeather, had never 
 moved out of her early groove and were all that 
 Fanny's ' fancy painted her.' 
 
 Mary and Miss Penfeather arrived, after a 
 few hours' railway journey, at the station nearest 
 Sandford farm. Kit Must was waiting for them and 
 their travelhng wraps with the Whitechapel cart, 
 which was the sole equipage kept at Sandford. 
 
 Mary thought it was delightfully independent, 
 and that nothing could be more exhilarating 
 than the drive straight through the cornfields by 
 roads which were somewhat too rough for Mrs. 
 Penfeather's nerves and bones, and leading, with- 
 out let or hindrance, up to the very farmhouse 
 door, 
 
 Sandford was a large white farmhouse dropped 
 like a great stone in the middle of the fields. It
 
 BY THE ELBE. Ill 
 
 afforded a complete contrast to the Warren house 
 in architecture, grounds, and situation. It might 
 have been erected, and probably, though the place 
 was not above thirty years old, some of the rooms 
 had been used for a barn and granary, so spacious 
 were they in their own homely way. It had never 
 been anything better than a farmhouse, though built 
 by a man who was at once proprietor and tenant. 
 The house and land had been sold to Mr. Car- 
 teret, when he was still a young squire, and not 
 yet so hampered for money as to escape being 
 bitten by the passion of adding house to house 
 and field to field, so leaving the Warren estate by 
 a thousand acres larger than he had found it. 
 
 Sandford was destitute of avenue of any kind, 
 of wood or moor. It stood in a bare though rich 
 corn country, and its founder had done nothing to 
 remove the bareness and supply shade, beyond 
 laying out a large garden given up to fruit and 
 vegetables behind the house, where the superex- 
 cellent brick wall met the enclosure of the offices, 
 and by adding a heavy unornamental white stone 
 porch to the front of the house. It seemed as if 
 the owner's invention had failed at this point, or 
 else his funds had been turned in the direction of 
 the handsome offices, which he had taken a pro- 
 fessional pride in supplying with every modern 
 convenience for the lightening of labour and the 
 wellbeing of generations of animals. Not a bush 
 had been planted or railing raised ; the house in
 
 112 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 its front aspect stood bare and staring, confronting 
 the fields, from which it was only separated by the 
 rough road without a boundary, and that led away 
 without an interruption into a fruitful wilderness 
 of more fields. 
 
 ' It might be a farmer's paradise,' Mary said 
 gaily, and she thought there was something of the 
 farmer in her nature, for she hked to feel herself 
 like a lark in the midst of the corn when she was 
 at Sandford. She did not miss a park or paddock 
 when these undulating green waves of corn swept 
 all around her. She did not miss a garden when 
 she had poppies, oxeyed daisies, corn-cockles, 
 and corn-marigolds quite at hand. Those unap- 
 proachable flowers were so very accommodating 
 that, in place of wanting to be cared for, they did 
 their best to come up of their own sweet will, in 
 spite of Kit Must and his harrow, and never failed 
 in luxuriance whatever his malice. Mary main- 
 tained above all, there were such fresh free changes 
 of the seasons under one's very nose at Sandford — 
 from the date when the blue green and grass green, 
 the autumn and spring growths of corn were 
 coming up with the loveliest most tender hairy 
 coat on the rough brown earth, to the season when 
 the corn was growing tall and stately and begin- 
 ning to shoot into the ear as at present. This was 
 the time when the wild flowers abounded, and the 
 landrail was for ever sounding liis rattle, while there 
 were little bright eyes and furry tails of weasels
 
 BY THE ELBE. 113 
 
 to be seen at tlie roots of the hedges, and glossy- 
 black moles about the sides of ditches — as there 
 were blackbirds in the walnut tree on the lawn, 
 squirrels on the firs on the moor, and stray hedge- 
 hogs to be found of an evening in either of the 
 avenues at the Warren. 
 
 Then there came the days when the grassy 
 stalks dried up into straw and bent under a weight 
 of pale or red gold — another gold from that of the 
 poor dropping, perishing laburnum — to be followed 
 by the stage of the maize-tinted stubble, with the 
 wild thyme's and mint's crushed out scent under 
 the sportsman's foot. 
 
 Yes, Mary acknowledged the ploughed land 
 must come in its turn ; but the gleaming ploughs 
 before the powerful horses and patient ploughmen, 
 with the crowd of magpies and crows descending 
 to pick up their prey from the long straight fur- 
 rows, formed no unpleasant sight, and winter did 
 not generally pass without supplying at least one 
 white mantle, wide and far spread, spotless and 
 undefiled, till the sun's rays melted it clean away. 
 
 Fra might rail against that odious farmhouse 
 to which shooting parties were apt to be sent, and 
 Lyd might complain that its vicinity did not afford 
 a single thatch roof or water-wheel for sketching ; 
 even Regy and Tom had blamed it because the 
 offices were too modern and in too good repair 
 to furnish a fair rat hunt wlien other game was 
 inadmissible. But Mary spared from her love for 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 the Warren a sort of indulgent fondness for Sand- 
 ford, the more decided that nobody else liked the 
 place in itself, not even Mr. Carteret, who shared 
 many of Mary's tastes for the good reason that 
 she had derived them from him. Mary had a mind 
 of her own, and was quite capable of liking and 
 knowing that she liked something that nobody else, 
 not even her father, cared for. 
 
 Inside the house the unusual space was the 
 only recommendation, even to Mary, of the great 
 rambling dining room and best parlour, in which 
 the farmer-proprietor must have seen himself dis- 
 pensing refreshment to the members of parish 
 ploughing matches, or receiving deputations from 
 agricultiu'al societies, or holding coroner's inquests. 
 The rooms were not mellowed by age, and were 
 but scantily furnished with some fixtures of clumsy 
 table, sideboard, and screen left behind by the 
 aspiring farmer, and by the least valued and the 
 most thoroughly faded and dilapidated of such 
 curtains, carpets, and chairs as could be spared 
 from the Warren. Still Mary protested that the 
 space was a great deal in itself, in order to feel 
 not like a crow in the mist — she did not admit that 
 — or an inhabitant of the long, chill, bare common 
 room of a workhouse or penitentiary, but rather 
 like a free independent member of society, who 
 could busy herself with her own occupations and 
 think her own thoughts within the same four walls 
 as the others, and yet be out of earshot of them.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 115 
 
 Mary was not slow in introducing to Mrs. Pen- 
 feather Kit Must and his mother, who were the 
 custodians of the farmhouse. A young girl taken 
 from the parish charity school and continually 
 leaving to be replaced by another hand-maiden 
 could not be reckoned among the fixtures and the 
 responsible members of the establishment. The 
 Musts occupied the front and back kitchens, which 
 were not in proportion to the size of the dining- 
 room and parlour, but there were ample dairy, 
 cheese, and apple rooms included in the offices. 
 
 The mother and son could be best judged of 
 together, and with their respective qualities throw- 
 ing up, as it were, their complementary merits. 
 Mrs. Must was by no means the principal in point 
 of worth and use ; but she had so impressed her 
 superiority on her son, her charity girl for the 
 time being, and even on Mr. Carteret and Mary, 
 that her portrait ought to be drawn first. She had 
 been an upper servant in a family of good position 
 and had married out of it a substantial tradesman in 
 a country village. In these circumstances she had 
 been a perfectly exemplary woman. But things 
 had not gone well with Mrs. Must ; indeed, they 
 had gone so very ill that she had succumbed to 
 them. By the time her husband was dead, 
 his business gone, and her elder child had turned 
 out badly, she was capable of doing nothing 
 but sitting and bearing testimony to her forlorn 
 respectability, and bewaihng her change of 
 
 i2
 
 116 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 estate. She had saved some wrecks from her 
 earher prosperity. She was content to eke out 
 a bare existence on these, together with such wages 
 as Kit could earn from his earhest years — not a 
 penny or an hour having been saved for the boy's 
 education. 
 
 The consequence was that Kit, a thoughtful, 
 dihgent child of whom something could have been 
 made, grew up in profound ignorance, only ligh- 
 tened as he advanced towards manhood by his 
 own eccentric efforts to remedy the deficiency. 
 
 Kit Must possessed a natural gift, an instinctive, 
 wellnigh unerring, perception of every feature and 
 change in the natural world. He got the credit when 
 he grew up of being peculiarly skilled, or ' skilly ' 
 according to local language, in the signs of the 
 weather, the prospects of the crops, the points of 
 a horse, a sheep, or a pig — the degree of health or 
 ^ sickness, fat or leanness, to be attained by these 
 animals. Without this deserved reputation he 
 would have been as poverty-stricken and clownish 
 as any labourer in the kingdom ; yet Kit Must 
 was exactly of the stuff of which out of date, 
 patient weather prophets, herbalists, and bone- 
 setters were made. 
 
 He was poor enough when Mr. Carteret en- 
 countered him, conceived a high opinion of his 
 natural sagacity in a particular direction, and 
 gradually promoted him till he became bailiff at 
 Sandford. His elevation had answered perfectly.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 117 
 
 unless the little difficulty of Kit's proving tyran- 
 nical to his subjects, with regard to whom he had 
 lately been the inferior, and over whose scratched, 
 shaken, and resisting heads he had been raised. 
 
 It was a repetition, with variations, of the digni- 
 fied historical case of Eudolph of Hapsburg and 
 the King of Bohemia, in whose household the 
 elected emperor had once acted as steward. More 
 than one rustic king of Bohemia again pledged 
 and lost crown and kingdom — that is, cartwhip, 
 harness, and three-roomed cottage- — rather than 
 submit to what was inevitable in the shape of a 
 parvenu emj)eror or baihff. But time cured the 
 discontent ; especially as Kit, though despotic, was 
 not unjust. 
 
 Kit Must had entertained no thought save that 
 ' owd mother ' was to derive the chief social bene- 
 fit from his rise in life, and be restored, as far as 
 he could restore her, to the privileges which had 
 been forfeited by no fault of his, even as the 
 foundation of his prosperity had been laid by no 
 exertion of hers. For her not eminently deserving 
 sake, while many more self-sacrificing mothers are 
 forsaken and forgotten. Kit faithfully forswore the 
 charms that might liave existed for him in any 
 woman, buxom or blythe, among his compeers. 
 
 ' Owd mother, she alius would 'ave the best 
 that was agoin, even when we was at the wust,' 
 her son would say in unconscious satire and even 
 with a grain of admiration. ' She would never
 
 118 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 put up with no trash of meat nor clotliin' if she 
 could help it. It was none for her ; she couldn't 
 abide it ; it didn't come natral to her as it did to 
 me, and as it do to amost of your common folk. 
 She had a spirit of her own, had owd mother, and 
 main proud she's been, and the best that she could 
 get she would 'ave, come from where it hked. 
 " Dearest is cheapest in the end," she would say, 
 though, dang it, it often bet me how dearest were 
 to be got ; but she got it, she did, in a way, at the 
 wust ; and it would be hard if she hadn't her ease 
 and power to prank herself at this time of day.' 
 
 Therefore ' owd mother,' after rising from the 
 poorest cottage room of all those to which she had 
 sunk, through a succession of better rooms and 
 cottages, was transferred at last to the comfortable 
 quarters and the dignity which belonged to the 
 housekeeper of the bailiff at Sandford. There she 
 sat, as she had sat in her adversity, tidy as she had 
 always contrived to be in her own person, which 
 had a certain prized air of gentility about it, and 
 was ministered to and waited upon by Kit and the 
 charity girl — as long as the last could stand the 
 combined imperiousness of Kit and the airs 
 and exactions of his mother. It was only when 
 any of the Carterets were at Sandford that Mrs. 
 Must, who was fairly able-bodied and not much 
 above sixty years of age, bestirred herself to 
 furnish them with service. On this occasion she 
 received Mary and Mi's. Penfeather with Mrs.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 119 
 
 Must's peculiar, pensive blanduess. She referred 
 very slightly to the changes in prospect. She men- 
 tioned them entirely as they affected the Squire's 
 family with regard to the fatigue and trouble which 
 they would imdergo in travelling and the inferior 
 accommodation they would have to put up with. 
 Yet she gave Mary a sense that Mr. Carteret had 
 been the means of injuring Mrs. Must, and that it 
 was only Mrs. Must's magnanimity which over- 
 looked the injury. 
 
 Kit was totally unlike the straight-backed, 
 long-nosed, tight-mouthed, ornamental piece of 
 humanity who, in her little shawl and mittens 
 and very white cap, had continued to impose her 
 burden, and secure her compensation, in sympathy 
 and consideration, from relations, neighbours, and 
 masters throughout her career. 
 
 Kit had been ill-grown m his youth from the 
 want of the nourishment which had gone to keep his 
 mother erect, fresh coloured, and smooth skinned. 
 Now, in early middle age, he was round in the 
 back and bald in the head, while his irregular- 
 featured face was gaunt, tanned, and puckered all 
 over with premature ^vrinkes. Of course his life 
 in the open air, in all kinds of weather, had con- 
 tributed to this result, while it had added a faint 
 reflection of a wild hunter's freedom, together with 
 his shyness and rudeness, to Kit's demeanour. 
 
 Like most self-educated men, he was onesided 
 and positive, full of cranks and crotchets on the
 
 120 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 surface. His mother, on the contrary, who was 
 always apologising for Kit, while she herself was 
 one-sided enough, certainly, in her own egotism 
 made allowance for the egotism of others. She 
 was smooth-spoken, and had much tact where- 
 with to insinuate quietly her merits and sufferings 
 and the deserts which were at last crowned with 
 an approach to their due. She rather looked than 
 spoke her claims. But these looks of venerable 
 old-world gentility, which had survived so many 
 rubs, were patent not only over an uncultivated 
 son, who had never failed to revere her — even when 
 in Ilia uncouth manners he spoke most roughly to 
 her, but over the people who half distrusted 
 Mrs. Must. Mr. Carteret, Mary, the very Fra — 
 though she voted the obstacle an unmitigated bore 
 — would not trouble Mrs. Must more than they 
 could help when they were over at Sandford ; 
 while they all laughed at and put down Kit in his 
 cross, blundering, blunt objections and assumptions. 
 But then Kit — weather-worn to the degree that 
 he was, weather-soiled with a soil which no soap 
 and water could remove — when he meant to be 
 better got up than usual, in an old shooting coat 
 of his master's which was much too long in the 
 back and arms for the present wearer, and which 
 did not suit well with Kit's own coarse corduroys 
 and gaiters, and standing with his legs far apart 
 — one leg bandy — shifting his two feet as he was 
 apt to do, was far from an imposing figure.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 121 
 
 CHAPTEE Vn. 
 
 THE woman's side OF THE QUESTIOX. 
 
 Mary set herself to take down Kit's accounts the 
 very first thing after a farmhouse tea, as she and 
 her companion had agreed, in consideration of the 
 Sandford staff and larder, to make the late lunch 
 before they left the Warren serve for both lunch 
 and dinner. She knew the process of account- 
 taking was one of trouble and elaboration, and 
 that Kit would be exceedingly restive, not to say 
 refractory, if she kept him from his outdoor work 
 next morning to go through the ceremony. 
 
 In Kit's mind accounts, like ' glad meetings 
 round the joyous hearth,' Avere only for the even- 
 ing, and were beneath a man's notice when the 
 weightier matters of wheat or turnip hoeing, or 
 sheep shearing, call him forth with the sunrise. 
 
 Kit would not be disturbed in his routine, or 
 budge from his habits for Mary's father, far less 
 for Mary. It is but justice to the widely extended 
 chivalry of working England to explain that in 
 the eyes of Kit Must, who held his own mother in 
 unbounded, credulous reverence, Mary was only
 
 122 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 the Squire's daughter — a somewhat capable young 
 lady for a young lady, but owing that and every- 
 thing besides to her father. 
 
 Mary sat at her father's desk with the thumbed, 
 crumpled up pass-books in which Kit indited his 
 hieroglyphics and compassed, by strange and fear- 
 ful devices, his original ideas of sums, spread out 
 before her. 
 
 Kit, like a wild man of the woods, only with- 
 out the slenderest particle of the dignity and grace 
 attributed to that dying out denizen of society, 
 stood shifting his feet at her elbow, and stubbornly 
 refusino; to avail himself of a chair, while he con- 
 descended to throw light on the obscurity of what 
 were, however, his conscientiously and carefully 
 kept records. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather sat in the further corner of 
 the shadowy room, watching the sunset, wonder- 
 ing how long it was since she had seen, or if she 
 had ever before been in such a world of corn and 
 corn -rails, and catching fragments of Mary's ab- 
 jurations and remonstrances addressed to her sub- 
 ordinate. 
 
 Kit was chronically huffy during these neces- 
 sary explanations, and Mary had a fancy that 
 he felt himself degraded by being compelled to 
 make tliem to a woman. When she had acted 
 as her father's substitute on the former occasion 
 referred to, her father had been present, lend- 
 ing his countenance to the transaction, and re
 
 BY THE ELBE. 123 
 
 movincr from Kit the stisfma of workinsj on an 
 equality, if not as an inferior, in dealings with a 
 woman. To work for a woman Kit could under- 
 stand; he had done that since he could gather 
 sticks or herd cows, and had consented to it with 
 gruff cheerfulness. He had also marshalled and 
 ruled over women, and found them unbearably 
 troublesome subordinates as field labourers, but 
 to have business with a woman as a mistress, was 
 an unnatural operation. 
 
 Mary, though she was in general a good 
 deal influenced by the moods of her associates, 
 was in temporary high spirits. She had been 
 more or less sad of late. This little visit to 
 Sandford was like an interregnum in the heavy 
 trial of leaving the Warren, though Sandford too 
 was to be left. She was exliilarated by her piece 
 of work ; she was amused by Kit's access of gloom 
 and crustiness. 
 
 ' What are these signs. Kit ? ' called Mary, 
 pointing with her white taper fingers to a vilely 
 blotted column, ' and what could you mean by 
 subtracting that second row from the first ? ' 
 
 ' These be sevens and noins as plain as paint, 
 Miss,' complained Kit, in the deeply resentful tone 
 of a gravely insulted man, who puts a force upon 
 himself to the extent of enduring the insult. ' In 
 coorse these are the row of tippences and thrip- 
 pences I had to take off to leave the shillings as 
 was complete.'
 
 124 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ' Oh, that is it ! but why did you not think of 
 adding them, and dividing the whole by twelve ? ' 
 
 ' I dessay it would a' come to the same thing,' 
 granted Kit, with a mixture of candour and scorn; 
 * but if my plan answered, were'nt that enough ? 
 Where were the use — I never seed it — on altering 
 
 ' To preserve unanimity of arithmetic — to enable 
 
 your fellow-creatures to read your reckoning 
 
 unless you mean to hold it in cipher for a perpetuity,' 
 said Mary in the intervals of her own summing up ; 
 and then she said, a little exasperatingly, ' there, I 
 have brought it to the same total by the time- 
 honoured regular method ; isn't it rather clever of 
 me?' 
 
 Suddenly Kit turned upon her. 'I don't know 
 what your cleverness is worth. Miss, when it ain't 
 no good to the Squire — not to keep him in his 
 own house and on his own lands. I mean, if you 
 had been a working man's daughter, and had got 
 a stout pair of shoulders and arms, you might 
 a' done a turn by his side in the fields, at 
 the dung spreading, or the wheat hoeing, or the 
 tossing of the hay — though it is as like as not you 
 would have had some other end to serve — and so 
 saved him from being sent adrift in his age, out of 
 his hole of a cottage where he meant to end his 
 days, when he was ceasing to be the value of his 
 hire, low as that was — and small blame to any- 
 body — bailiff mun do his dooty, and farmer, aye,
 
 BY THE ELBE. 125 
 
 and landlord mun live — tliougli your father couldn't 
 see it, not in time. If you had been a tradesman's 
 daughter you might have balanced his books by 
 your way on it, after working hours, and stood 
 behind the counter when his pins were agrowing 
 stiff ; but being a young lady as well as a woman, 
 what 'ave you been able to do ? Well, you might 
 'ave married a rich gentleman, as would 'ave been 
 as good as a bank to the Squire ; but that you 'ant 
 done, so where's the room for bragging,' ended Kit, 
 with a sour grin. 
 
 It was altogether unfair, as it was illogical, and 
 not a little mean, in Kit Must — that mingled slave 
 and autocrat where women were concerned — first 
 to be mortally offended with Mary for her being sent 
 to bring his accounts into trim, and then to re- 
 proach her with what was the bane of her life 
 and the root of bitterness in her heart, her useless- 
 ness as a rational and educated woman to her 
 father and her kind. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather had caught the man's harsh 
 untutored accents, and turned to look at Mary and 
 listen for her reply. ' Mr. Carteret would never 
 have taken such aid as that you propose. You 
 don't understand, Kit,' she said, with womanly 
 pride ; and then her head sank a little, and she 
 added, ' but you are right that I am not of much 
 help, though I can go over your accounts in 
 ordinary schoolboy fashion. Pray let us go on 
 with them now.'
 
 126 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Mrs. Penfeatlier saw that Mary's equanimity 
 had been disturbed and her gaiety dispersed. 
 When Kit was dismissed, she came and stood 
 beside Mrs. Penfeather looking out at the 
 deepening blue and green which, now that the 
 sunset glow had died out in the west, the May 
 twilight brought to the blue and the green, in the 
 sky above and the fields below, and which was 
 all around them until the ' soft obscure ' of night 
 became purple in the heavens and a dim sea-green 
 in the fields. 
 
 But Mary was not attending to the peculiar 
 attractions of the scene ; she was full, as youth is 
 apt to be, of her oAvn troubled conflicting emotions 
 and unworked out destiny. 
 
 ' Don't you think that Kit Must or any man 
 may be glad that he is not a woman,' she broke 
 out, unable to resist the chance of shocking her 
 mother's old friend. 
 
 ' Women are as God made them,' said Mrs. 
 Penfeather, in quiet reproof and seeking to try the 
 girl. ' If they have not the power, they have not 
 the burden And, do you know, I think that in all 
 the soft lamentations uttered by that pretty — she 
 is a very pretty old woman — downstairs, who 
 has been passee for half a century, and who is 
 only so far an impostor that she has thoroughly 
 imposed upon herself as well as upon her 
 Caliban, there has never been included this par- 
 ticular piece of pity for herself — which is also
 
 BY THE ELBE. 127 
 
 beyond remedy — that she had not been born a 
 labouring man with his drudgery and coarseness.' 
 
 Mary did not show that she caught the sly 
 humour of Mrs. Penfeather's meaning ; her heart 
 was too full, and of a subject too near to her, for 
 such treatment. ' Did God create women with 
 but half a head, or without a hand, or in any con- 
 spicuous way maimed and dwarfed ? ' she went on, 
 uttering her own thoughts. ' Why does God make 
 families in which the sons are all sickly and the 
 daughters strong ? or where the girls are shrewd 
 and capable and the boys simple and soft?' 
 
 ' I cannot tell, Mary, unless that these contra- 
 dictions may not after all proceed from God's 
 ordinance — permitted by Him of course they 
 must be.' 
 
 ' It is a great mystery and difficulty,' said Mary, 
 folding her hands with a sigh. ' All the wise men 
 of this generation do not seem to be able to solve 
 the question — if they ever care to consider it— ^of 
 what is to be done with the thousands and 
 thousands of single women who will never be the 
 doubles of so many men, who cannot work because 
 there is no work provided for them, or because 
 they have not been trained for such work as they 
 can find, and who cannot starve — that is bodily, 
 for multitudes of them have to starve mentally.' 
 
 ' Perhaps some Mr. Plimsol will rise up to 
 their rescue,' said Mrs. Penfeather, wickedly.
 
 128 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ' Don't laugh, Mrs, Penfeather,' said Mary, ad- 
 ministering a mild rebuke in her turn. ' Perhaps 
 women had better bring themselves at once to 
 beg humbly — not for bread alone, but for a life 
 worthy to be lived, from their fellow-men.' 
 
 ' And in doing so don't let them forget that 
 they are Avomeu,' said Mrs. Penfeather. * Don't you 
 see, Mary, that it is the very womanliness — though 
 it is by no means the higher order of womanliness 
 — which has recommended such a woman as Mrs. 
 Must, in her dignity and daintiness, to such a man 
 as her son ? ' 
 
 ' Mrs. Penfeather,' Mary began again impul- 
 sively, after a pause of some moments, emboldened 
 to be confidential by the conviction that Mrs. 
 Penfeather, with her reservations, her fun which 
 had survived so much, and her warnings, had 
 some sympathy with her young companion, ' I 
 do not know whether I am low minded or revo- 
 lutionary ; mamma says the last, though of course 
 she does not mean it quite ' 
 
 ' No,' said Mrs. Penfeather coolly, ' and there 
 is no occasion for your calling yourself hard names.' 
 
 ' Yes ; but I do wish I had been born a 
 working woman, in what people call the lower 
 class ; I have envied such a woman many a time. 
 She knows what she has to do, whether it is in 
 working a sewing-machine, or scrubbing a floor, or 
 cooking a dinner, or, like one of the women under 
 Kit here, labourimr in the fields. She can do it
 
 BY THE ELBE. 129 
 
 with all her mio'lit. She has not an idle or a long- 
 hour ; she can help herself and she can help her 
 neighbours. There is not a doubt about it tliat she 
 is a real boon to her f\imily, and of use in God's 
 world. She has the satisfaction of her own con- 
 science, and the pleasure, the joy of service, 
 when it is for those she loves. Ah ! she is a 
 happy woman.' 
 
 ' What, Mary ! without the time or the oppor- 
 tunity for self-improveilient, often overworked and 
 underpaid, knocked about, harassed, oppressed? 
 Child, I have seen women in some parts — not of 
 India alone, but of enlightened Christian Germany — 
 who were condemned to work like beasts of burden, 
 carrying huge burdens on their backs, digging the 
 ground, acting as scavengers in the public streets.' 
 
 ' I believe I could come not to mind that,' 
 said Mary desperately ; ' I am sure I had rather be 
 a beast of burden than a human butterfly.' 
 
 ' You don't know wiiat you are saying,' said 
 Mrs. Penfeather, somewhat in tlie tone of Mary's 
 mother. 
 
 ' Oh, Mrs. Penfeather,' cried Mary passionately 
 again, ' the weariness, the inanit}-, the demoralising, 
 degrading effect of liaving no defined purpose in 
 life ! Do you tliink — I am sure you don't — that tlie 
 self-improvement of which you speak is consistent 
 with such a state of tilings ? Do you call self-im- 
 provement bringing one's self, after hecatombs of 
 hours sacrificed to the end, to play and sing a little 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 better, or to have read a little more solid history or 
 French or German than one's neighbours ? ' 
 
 ' My dear, I am afraid yon are revolutionary. 
 Do you imagine that every man or woman should 
 work with his or her hands ? Have you been 
 reading Mr. Euskin ? ' 
 
 ' No — yes,' replied Mary ; ' I don't desire a uni- 
 versal return to handicraft ; I have no notion that 
 the solution of the woman puzzle lies, as some men 
 and one woman would have it, in our being con- 
 verted into a uniform lot of cooks and housemaids. 
 I have often read Mr. Euskin with pleasure and 
 profit, and sometimes with bewilderment ; but he 
 has nothing to do with my present argument. I 
 am speaking from my own convictions, my own 
 experience. You are laughing again, Mrs. Pen- 
 feather,' said Mary, a little affronted. 
 
 ' Don't grudge me my laugh,' said Mrs. Pen- 
 feather, with a shade of unconscious pathos in the 
 request. ' I was only saying to myself that con- 
 victions are mature and experience extensive at the 
 age of twenty-four. Why, I am no more the same 
 woman I was at that age, though your good mother 
 thinks I am, than I am a begum, or a padrona, or 
 a Mrs. Court Councillor.' 
 
 ' And I dare say I shall be something different 
 also when I have attained twice my present years ; 
 but it is of the present I am thinking, it is the pre- 
 sent that is of most consequence to me now.' 
 
 'No doubt.'
 
 BY THE ELBE. 131 
 
 ' And a great many excellent religious people,' 
 continued Mary, carried away by her excitement, 
 'would tell me I ought not to be Avithout a 
 purpose; it ought to be more than sufficient 
 for me to love my God, obey my parents, and help 
 my neighbours ; and these duties I can always 
 at least seek to do, however imperfectly, in what- 
 ever station or circumstances. But how can I love 
 God properly and lead the idle objectless hfe which 
 I am sure He never meant any responsible human 
 being to lead ? If I obey my parents it is but a 
 barren obedience. You know mamma is a busy 
 active -woman, and disinclined naturally to give up 
 her own duties into the hands of another, and that 
 other I fear a far more incompetent person. I can do 
 absolutely nothing for papa in his cares and w^orries, 
 except be an additional burden to him ' There was 
 a break in Mary's voice as she said this which she 
 was fain to conceal, so she hurried on, pretend- 
 ing to make a jest in the end — the very line of 
 conduct for which she had been censurincr Mrs. 
 Penfeather. 'Tennyson says — 
 
 " Go teach the orphan boy to read, 
 And teach the orphan girl to sew." 
 
 The orphan boys and girls near the Warren 
 belong to the rector of the parish, to the charity 
 schoolmistress, and to a committee of efficient ladies 
 of whom mamma is one. With how many much 
 better qualified people's prior rights must I not 
 interfere — while I have no funds at my disposal to 
 
 K 2
 
 132 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 warrant the interference — what mischief may not I 
 in my ignorance do, if I seize upon all the orphan 
 boys and girls in the parish simply as a refuge 
 from my idleness ! Besides, ought not charity to 
 Begin at home? Whoever seriously recommended 
 an idle young man, even if he were a gentleman, 
 to betake himself to charity for an occupation ? 1 
 suppose that is one reason,' added Mary, illogical in 
 her bitterness, ' why sons are more welcome, even 
 though their education and outfit are so much more 
 expensive — though the army and the navy, the bar 
 and the church are overcrowded and no longer the 
 openings which they once were, while the mercantile 
 world demands capital for strange adventurers. The 
 colonies, as poor mamma feels, are far away ; still, 
 as I said, sons are welcome both in the estimation 
 of the inner circle at home and the outer circle of 
 friends and acquaintances, while daughters are ac- 
 cepted with tender resignation or veiled condolence 
 as so many helpless burdens.' 
 
 ' Are you afraid that the time will come when 
 w^e shall adopt the infanticide which we have 
 stamped out in our eastern empire? Listen to me, 
 dear ; it would have been a great consolation to me 
 in my early widowhood if I had been left, poor as 
 I was, Avith a baby, a living representative of my 
 young husband — do you wonder that I, so spare and 
 grey, should call Hugh Penfeather young ? he will 
 always be young to me. I would have given a good
 
 BY THE ELBE. 1 
 
 •JO 
 
 deal for a boy ; but I would liave given all that I pos- 
 sessed for a girl.' 
 
 ' But you were a widow and a woman yourself,' 
 said Mary naively enough. ' Xow, don't you think, 
 Mrs. Penfeather, that, among working people, hus- 
 band and wife alike must be as glad when a daughter 
 as when a son is born ? for the girl is born to as much 
 independence as the boy, and she can often be as 
 great a stay and support to her parents as her bro- 
 ther can be. In higher ranks, rich men — whether 
 they are dukes or earls or simply professional men, 
 may have it in their power to rejoice freely over 
 their little daughters. But the poor man, let him be 
 a nobleman or a country doctor, who has been en- 
 dowed by Providence with six or eight daughters 
 and no means of providing for them, save by pro- 
 curing for them the chance of marrying, how can 
 he, if he have any unselfish forethought, be a proud 
 and happy man when he looks on his train of 
 
 girls?' 
 
 Mrs. Penfeather was looking ciu'iously at 
 Mary. 
 
 ' Don't you know, Mary,' she asked, ' that you 
 are the greatest — one of the greatest comforts of 
 your father's life, only by being his dear daugh- 
 ter, his friend and companion, a polished shaft 
 in his lemple, and a solace for all his troubles? 
 Are you guilty of fancying that a father's love 
 is bouglit by the immunity from care, or the 
 future benefits which his children can confer on 
 him ? '
 
 134 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ' No, indeed ! ' exclaimed Mary, half indig- 
 nantly ; but she forgot tlie momentary offence 
 in the interest which the subject possessed for 
 her. ' Yet, should, not beneiits, in the children's 
 interest and for their own sake, be more recipro- 
 cal ? Think how happy papa and I would have 
 been if he had been a bailiff like Kit Must, or 
 a blacksmith or • a carpenter ! I am always 
 provoking you to laugh ; but I think I would 
 liave preferred to have had liim a bailiff or a 
 small former, which is more easily imagined 
 when the original is a squire. Then my health 
 and strength, and any amount of sense I have, 
 with Fra's cleverness and Lyd's docility, would all 
 have been so much available material for papa. 
 Then his quiver would have been fidl of arrows, 
 in the Psalmist's phrase, and he need not have 
 become the poorest of his neighbours, forced 
 to give in at last. In that case Ave might have 
 worked for him so effectually as to win all back. 
 I am sure mamma would have been as happy 
 as the day is long — though she might blame me for 
 speaking treason at tliis moment — far happier 
 than slie is at present ; working out her house- 
 hold arrangements without a servant to mar 
 them, and w^ith so much of our comfort and 
 prosperity depending on her success. She would 
 have been successful ; everything would have been 
 well ordered. We girls might have entered into 
 a worthy rivalry to see which could be the
 
 BY THE ELBE. 135 
 
 most industrious or skilful and gain the most. 
 I would have chosen to remain at home and to 
 work at papa's side, if possible — out in the fields 
 there, or in the barn or stackyard, or among the 
 cows or calves, for I have always been fond of 
 animals ; and I could have seen when papa's health 
 began to fail, and would have spared him every 
 exertion that was too much for him. Even to 
 go out into the world would not have been bad if 
 it had been to work for myself and those at home — 
 always to keep that in mind, with the holiday 
 seasons — how bright and sweet they would have 
 been to look forward to ! Mrs. Penfeather, I 
 beheve almost any kind of honest work would 
 be better than no work.' 
 
 ' My child, I do not wonder that you envy 
 working women if you can call up such pictures 
 — perfect unless in this, that they resemble those 
 portraits of herself which Queen Elizabeth ap- 
 proved of because of their very defect, that 
 they were without shade. Girls did not make 
 such pictures when I was young, though I think 
 I have heard that French girls did in tlieir fan- 
 tastic fashion, copying Frenclimen in the same 
 line, just before the great revolution. You may 
 take tliat as a warning or not, just as you 
 please. But my girl-days do not go back to 
 anything so grand and grim as a revolution ; 
 only to some Chartist riots, and to the first talk of 
 the first Exhibition. Even then girls married more
 
 136 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 frequently and at an earlier age than tliey many 
 now. Their education had not progressed to such a 
 satisfactory completeness that tliey should begin to 
 go back and ask to wliat it tended, and to study 
 afresh its first principles. I do not imagine any girl 
 among ni}^ contemporaries ever enquired what 
 all her music-practising, and French and Italian 
 reading Avould come to ; and that, while music as a 
 science was only dawning on English musicians and 
 foreign travel Avas mucli rarer than it is now. We 
 were enQ;rossedby the details and seldom ventured 
 beyond them. We were persuaded that, after 
 going to church, saying our prayers, and honouring 
 our father and motlier, to thrum so many hours 
 on our pianos or drudge witli our classics and 
 their dictionaries was highly meritorious. For any- 
 thing more, to have a class in the vicar's scliool, 
 to be punctual in our appearance and exertions 
 there, and to attend to social obho-ations in the 
 matter of morninc calls and dinners — for balls 
 were not obligations, they were splendid privileges 
 and possibilities — formed the whole duty of young 
 women. I have a faint idea that we considered 
 ourselves most virtuous and exemplary in the 
 performance of our duty. I know that we were 
 a great deal more contented than you girls are, 
 and that I would rather have been born — one of 
 your questions was how, if nou where, we would 
 have ourselves born — in my o'eneration than in 
 yours. Inasmuch as we acted up to our light,
 
 BY THE ELBE. 137 
 
 it seems to me that we deserved our serenity. 
 But I do not pretend to say whether or not our 
 light was but a farthing candle light ; or whether 
 the ferment that exists among our successors, 
 which no lectures and no lauditer suffice to still, 
 is simply the sign of a transition period out of 
 which will result higher harmony.' 
 
 There Avas a long silence till darkness — all the 
 darkness of a summer iiio-ht — had beixun to de- 
 scend on the couple at tlie open window of the 
 farmhouse. 
 
 . Then Mary suddenly broke out again, and 
 fired a parting shot. ' Mrs. Penfeather,' she 
 boldly said, ' I allowed that rich men, dukes or 
 merchant-princes — but let them be princes of the 
 blood royal at once if you like — were at liberty to 
 delight in tlieir goodly groups of daughters. We 
 are, on the whole and taken together, pleasant to 
 look upon in our youth ; our worst enemy won't 
 deny, rather insists provokingly on tliat, as if 
 it were the best of us, on the Turkisli princi[)]e. 
 However, I do not envy these rich men's daugiiters 
 witli tlieir fathers — free in one sense to be as idle 
 as they like, to tiiink of nothing save their own 
 pleasure, tliat most wearisome, dreariest tliougfit 
 to anyone fit— and we are all fit — for something 
 infwiitely nobler.' 
 
 ' Now hush, Mary,' said Mrs. Tenfeather ; ' I do 
 not say that you are not speaking the truth. ]3ut 
 you have spoken quite enough treason for oneniglit.
 
 138 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 and you have disturbed me in listening, in the quiet- 
 ness that maybe felt here, to a pecuhar serenade. All 
 the farm-house noises — the clucking and gobbling 
 of late hens, geese, and ducks, the lowing of calves 
 demanding to be fed, the jingling of bridles, the 
 stamping of hoofs, and the voices of workpeople 
 returning from their day's work — have ceased, one 
 by one, hours ago. A little breeze has risen, and 
 there is an audible accompaniment to my thoughts. 
 It is not like the monotonous break of the waves 
 in all kinds of weather, at the full height of the 
 tide, on the shore ; neither is it like the continued 
 cracking, swinging, and swishing of trees in a 
 wood, even in an incipient storm ; it is a fitful 
 and yet often-repeated rustling, like the stirring of 
 angels' wings all around us.' 
 
 ' It is the nio;ht wind comin"' and 2;oin2^ amoncc 
 the corn,' said Mary.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 130 
 
 CHAPTER Vlir. 
 
 THE HOUSEKEEPER OF THE MANAGES OF THE SECRET 
 WORKS AND THE M.'LN'AGER IN HIS OWN PERSON. 
 
 The next day the weather w^as still fine, and 
 favourable for Mary's survey. She managed it by 
 driving out herself and Mrs. Penfeather — slowly, to 
 spare Mrs. Penfeather 's bones and to enable Mary 
 to make her inspection — in the Whitechapel cart. 
 
 Kit Must was, in his own opinion, better 
 engaged, which was, on the whole, to the ladies' 
 relief ; lor Kit's grudging presence and pioneership 
 would have been a shadow on the expedition, and 
 might have had a damping effect on Mary's powers 
 of observation. They went along and across all 
 the cartroads which intersected the farm. Mary 
 occasionally handed the reins and the whip to her 
 friend — who took them under protest and with 
 fear. and trembling — and wrote a remark in a note- 
 book, even sketched a post awry, the serious 
 gap in a hedge, or some damage done to a young 
 plantation. Happily the pony was elderly and 
 staid, and its freight met with no misadventure. 
 
 Mary was full of importance, and strove to be
 
 140 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 exact, while Mrs. Peiifeatlier humoured her by 
 supplying hints and refraining from interruptions. 
 The two had returned from their examination, 
 which had lasted all the morning. Mary was 
 speculating whether she might, without invading 
 the kind of dignity made up of merit and long 
 and well-borne misfortune which hedged in Mrs. 
 Must, beg her to hurry the early dinner, when a 
 double knock, of all sounds, was heard at the 
 front door, which stood already invitingly open. 
 
 ' Who can it be ? ' cried Marv. ' What visitor 
 can we possibly have ? We know the Dennisons 
 over at Winstanley, but I understood that they had 
 gone to the South of France for Laura Dennison's 
 health. Mrs. Must has just told me that the new 
 rector is celebratinoj his second marriage in York- 
 shire, and we had a glimpse of the doctor's 
 brougham bowling along the high road on his 
 usual round. I cannot imagine who is there.' 
 
 ' You need not trouble your imagination ; here 
 he or she comes,' said Mrs. Penfeather in an 
 undertone, as Mrs. Must's charity-school girl — not 
 Mrs. Must herself, the visitor was not deserving of 
 that mark of honour — opened the door, and walk- 
 ing in first, stood for a moment goggle-eyed, in 
 mute appeal, and then retreated rapidly before a 
 nameless stranger. 
 
 The stranger was a she, a young lady appa- 
 rently about the age of Mary Carteret, but dressed 
 in the more youthful fashion of Mary's sisters. For
 
 BY THE ELBE. 141 
 
 Mary, partly from natural taste, and partly out or 
 consideration for the six years' seniority constantly 
 dangled before her eyes, affected a little sobriety, 
 especially in her walking dress ; she inclined to 
 jackets instead of Marie Antoinette fichus, and 
 adopted larger hats, which were for use as well 
 as for ornament. 
 
 The fashionably fastidiously dressed young lady 
 was not pretty at the first glance ; she had too 
 long a nose, and she was sallow, with a sallowness 
 not redeemed by the sandy hue of her hair. But 
 she was handsome in figure ; and her clothes, if 
 they were too prononce in their cut, were well 
 fitting and of well-chosen materials and colours — a 
 summer muslin gown of a delicate buff colour, 
 and a tliin scarlet shawl w^ound plaid fashion about 
 her, with a little black and white hat having the 
 white wing of some sea-bird in it, on the small 
 well-set head. As for the minor touches which 
 belong to high-heeled kid boots and French 
 grey kid gloves, they were so fine as to have the 
 air of being as sedulously studied as the rest of 
 the dress, but were inappropriate to the situa- 
 tion . Mary glanced quickly at her chamois garden 
 gloves and leather boots, first in dismay and then 
 in complacence. 
 
 There were ease and self-mastery about the 
 whole face and figure, which told not so much of 
 training as of accuracy — and conscious accuracy in
 
 142 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 knowlediye with regard to what she could, do and 
 wliat she wanted — in the individual. 
 
 'I must announce myself,' she said, Avith a 
 perfectly natural laugh which was neither forward 
 nor bashful, and as if the process was strange but 
 not too difficult for her. ' I am Ahce Honey wood. 
 I live at Gorebridge Cottage, at the end of the 
 village. My brother is at present acting as 
 manager for tlie company who have the chemical 
 works and are tenants of Mr. Carteret. I believe 
 that I have the pleasure of speaking to Miss 
 Carteret.' 
 
 Mary said yes, she was Miss Carteret, and 
 she was glad to see Miss Honey wood ; then she 
 mentioned Mrs. Penfeather. It might not be a 
 usage of society to introduce people who met 
 by chance as these two people met, but Mary 
 rapidly considered that it ought to set Miss 
 Honeywood more at ease. Being by her visitor's 
 own tale the social superior, Mary felt it the 
 bounden duty of her superiority to set the stranger 
 still more at ease than she was already. 
 
 At the same time Mary cogitated whether 
 there really existed any obligation in the fact 
 which Miss Honeywood had stated, of her being 
 the sister of the manager of Mr. Carteret's tenants 
 in the chemical works, which could render it incum- 
 bent on her to call and Mary to receive the call 
 during a stay of two days' duration at Sandford. 
 
 Miss Honeywood clearly divined the argument
 
 BY THE ELBE. 143 
 
 for and against her presence in the waste space of 
 the Sandford best parlour, as it was passing through 
 Mary's mind. 
 
 ' I have an apology to make for my intrusion,' 
 she said, readily, and with the grace which ac- 
 companies fluency and self-possession. ' I was at 
 school at Miss Bradshaw's, Ivy Lodge, before I 
 came here to keep house for my brother, I ven- 
 tured to hope that you could tell me something of 
 dear old Miss Bradshaw and my schoolfellows.' 
 
 ' It was my sisters, and not I, who w^ere at 
 Miss Bradshaw's. I am sorry they are not here 
 to give you the information you wish,' said Mary, 
 feeling her sincerity more and more tried. She was 
 in doubt whether either Fra or Lyd would have 
 seen herself compelled to answer the pressing 
 questions of one of those half-boarders, of secondary 
 and debatable rank, with regard to whom Mary 
 had heard Fra — while descanting on the select 
 character of Miss Bradshaw's school — regret that 
 the schoolmistress should make an exception. 
 
 ' But perhaps you may be able to give me 
 some news,' said Alice Honeywood, entreatingly. 
 ' Letters are so unsatisfactory, and school friends 
 soon get bad correspondents, which is a pity for 
 those who have few other correspondents,' she 
 added, with a little sigh. 'You will forgive me 
 for coming. I was so pleased to hear that you 
 were at Sandford.' 
 
 The artlessness was not assumed. Alice
 
 144 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Honeywood was a mixture of art and artlessness ; 
 or rather the art was so consummate that it had 
 become second nature and worked hke an impulse. 
 Mary ceased to question whether Ahce Honey- 
 wood had any right to be glad or sorry that 
 members of the Squire's family were at Sandford. 
 She said sincerely there was nothinsr to forcfive, 
 while she added, with an involuntary smile, that 
 her stay and that of her friend at Sandford was to 
 be so short — just two days, she was afraid it could 
 not warrant any human being in feeling either 
 sad or o-lad. 
 
 ' Just two da3"s ! ' Alice Honeywood repeated, 
 with such real regret in her accents that Mary 
 Carteret, a friendly woman by instinct, could not 
 foil to be drawn to her. ' I am so sorry ; I fancied 
 that you had come over for a week or two at the 
 very least. I knew that the family were froinii 
 abroad ; but I hoped that Mr. Carteret would pay 
 a parting visit to Sandford, and I believed that 
 you were his avant-coureurs. To have any mem- 
 bers of the family staying at the farm, as I was 
 told you did at odd times, would have been such 
 a boon to my brother and me. And there you have 
 never come since we arrived, and we are losing 
 you, I may say, before we have found you.' 
 
 This last proposition was so self-evident that 
 Mary felt at liberty to laugh outright, and the 
 open laugh establislied yet greater cordiality 
 between her and her guest. Still the conversation
 
 BY THE ELBE. 145 
 
 must liave languished, since Mary, rake her brains 
 as obhfrinfjly as she miirht, could not at second 
 hand have flirnished much return to Miss Honey- 
 wood for her cross-examination on Miss Brad- 
 shaw's school, Jiad not Alice shown herself — in 
 proportion as her anxiety for tidings of her 
 former home and companions gave way before 
 her hostess's incapacity to supply them — a person 
 of considerable independent conversational powers. 
 She was not brilliant like Fra, but neither was 
 she eccentric and not to be counted on for what 
 she might say next; a sense of safety, generally 
 the more acceptable experience of the two, sup- 
 ])lied the place of the brilliance. Her words 
 Howed on in a frank, light, agreeable prattle, 
 simple but not silly, principally of her own small 
 world and its concerns, to be sure, but with a 
 composed confidence in her hearer's interest in 
 what she said which had the effect of inspiring 
 that interest. The equable, moderately amusing 
 volubility might be too much sometimes ; one 
 might not be in the mood for it and so be tempted 
 to weigli the substance, which would be a dan- 
 gerous process; but it was certainly a great 
 resource on a first meeting. Mary had an im- 
 2)ression while she listened that it might be an 
 abidinsj resource in various ordinary and extra- 
 ordinary circumstances of social life. When people 
 were careless and coveted only to be entertained ; 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 when minds were jaded and weary with the labour 
 and strain of over thouo;ht and over work and 
 wanted to be gently diverted from themselves ; 
 when the wheels of life rolled heavily and 
 threatened disaster from which there Avas no 
 escape and for which there was only endurance, 
 then no doubt Alice Honeywood's cheerful, spon- 
 taneous, skimming-the-surface sort of talk had its 
 use and value. 
 
 Alice told her two auditors — generously revers- 
 ing the position of the ladies, as it seemed to 
 Mnrv, and constitutinii; herself the entertainer of 
 lier hostess without any trouble to her — a con- 
 siderable amount of harmless, rather enlivening 
 gossip within half-mi-hour. Alice had come to 
 Gorebrido-e Cotta2:e when she had left school 
 and immediately after her brother had accepted 
 the post of manager of the works. Gorebridge 
 Cottage was, as Mary readily admitted from her 
 own knowledge, very pretty, although it was 
 no larger than a pigeon-hole. Here, in Sand- 
 ford farmhouse, Alice could breathe, could move 
 lier elbows. But the worst of Gorebridge Cottage 
 was that it was dreadfully dull. Yes, to be sure, 
 there were the rector and tlie doctor — the latter 
 with a family — both resident in the village, as well 
 as herself and her brother, but that was not 
 much, was it ? 
 
 The I'ector had been constantly absent in 
 Yorkshire, paying suit to the lady who had at last
 
 BY THE ELBE. 147 
 
 accepted it. People did allege that he had pro- 
 posed foiu' times and borne four rejections without 
 feeling seriously offended or even daunted. Now 
 that he had won his prize — who, by the way, had, 
 in addition to her other charms, a property in 
 the south of Yorkshire — it was said she was so 
 fond of her place and her friends in the neigh- 
 bourhood that she would still detain the rector as 
 much as she decently could in her Eiding. 
 
 The doctor with his family went to chapel, and 
 though they were very respectable people other- 
 wise, that was trying, was it not? 
 
 As for the members of the company holding 
 the works — if they could have been reckoned, they 
 were all at a distance, city men, who only came 
 down themselves once or twice a year, and kept 
 their families in suburban villas near London. 
 
 Without any direct intimation to that effect, 
 Alice Honeywood's conversation was calculated to 
 produce the impression that she and her brotlier 
 had undergone a fall in the social ranks, though 
 the brother and sister were too brave and bright 
 to murmur at the falh 
 
 ' I get on very well, tliougli it is dull,' she 
 bore an encouraging testimony ; ' in summer I have 
 my flowers, and in winter I have my work and our 
 club books — we have a book club which is a credit 
 to the doctor, who is secretary — and I have my 
 music at all seasons. I am glad to sny the Czar, 
 
 l2
 
 l-iS BY THE ELBE. 
 
 that is my brother — I name liira the Czar because 
 he is an absolute sovereign — is iiot hable to be 
 called away at all hours, and monopolised by his 
 profession. lie has his laboratory at the works ; 
 but eight hours a day suffices as a rule for his ex- 
 periments. It is well, I tell him, else he would 
 become the blue or the G;reen man from a ruined 
 complexion, or lose his head and blow the wdrole 
 place up. He is not in perpetual danger of being 
 taken out just when dinner is on the table, or 
 when we have begun to try our new duet, and he 
 has not yet been tempted as far as Yorkshire in 
 pursuit of a reluctant old flame ! ' 
 
 (' I dare say that is a happy brother and sister,' 
 commented Mrs. Penfeather, in her own thoughts; 
 ' she speaks of him so gaily. But it is not because 
 his habits are the reverse of tyrannical that she 
 calls him the Czar. That is too far-fetched a piece 
 of affectation, and she is not foolishly affected.') 
 
 Miss Honeywood's talk was so frank that there 
 was no impertinence, there was rather good-na- 
 tured interest, in Mrs. Penfeather's spoken rejoinder 
 to the last remark. ' Your brother must be too 
 young for old flames. He has probably still to 
 encounter his first flame, which will very likely 
 reduce him to ashes at once.' 
 
 Alice Honey wood, in the middle of her compla- 
 cency, looked sharply up at Mrs. Penfeather; then 
 she recovered herself and said, w^ith a nod, ' And 
 there will be the end of my reign with the Czar ; a
 
 BY THE ELBE. 149 
 
 Czarina will rule in my stead, and I shall have to 
 accept the usual fate of devoted sisters, be tlirust 
 into the background and pensioned with a penny.' 
 
 (' Poor girl, I dare say she is dependent on her 
 brother,' Mrs. Penfeather pursued her thoughts, 
 ' and I have unwittingly dealt her a home thrust by 
 suggesting an unwelcome probability.') 
 
 It was Mary who was at fault next. ' I should 
 not think that you would be at a great loss for em- 
 ployment,' she said, meditatively, recurring to the 
 earlier gist of the conversation. She spoke with 
 the utmost simplicity, while full of her own theories, 
 which predisposed lier to envy Miss Honey wood for 
 her more detinite sphere and greater opportunity 
 for real work. ' If you are your brother's house- 
 keeper and he has nobody save you, with very 
 likely few, and those not very competent servants 
 — Mrs. Must has just been complaining of the use- 
 lessness of the charity-school girls — no doubt a 
 great deal of work devolves on you, and you can 
 make puddings — perhaps even bread fit to be 
 eaten — set rooms in order, and help with the 
 doing u[) of your own clothes,' said Mary, with a 
 trort of regretful approval. 
 
 Alice Iloneywood was not easily put out, and 
 had determined not to be put out. She had come 
 to Sandford resolved not only to be ogreeable 
 herself, but to fmd — nay, to force — the others to 
 be agreeable in their turn. The Carterets of the 
 Warren were poor — ergo proud. Fra, as Alice
 
 150 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 liad learnt by experience was a domineering girl. 
 Kevertheless, Alice Honeywood stared now with 
 her grey eyes — the best feature in her mce. Was 
 it the elder sister, Mary, and not Fra, who coolly 
 intended to be insulting, in her father's house 
 too ? Was Mary Carteret indulging in an ill-timed 
 jest ? Was she crazy ? Where was the explanation? 
 Alice Honeywood could not seek it further at that 
 moment ; she could only turn aside the unprovoked 
 accusation on Mary's part of common, middle- 
 class, almost plebeian usefulness, with the little 
 protest, ' Oh dear, no ; T am not at all what 
 old-fashioned folk used to describe as notable — it 
 is intensely funny for mc to see myself in that 
 character — the Czar does not require it of me. 
 We have an old housekeeper of the rector's, who 
 takes care of the cottage and, I must confess, of 
 both the Czar and me admirably. I cannot say 
 that I hear her complain of the housemaid, what- 
 ever Mrs. Must may do. Indeed, I believe Hardy 
 does not go to the charity school for her assistants, 
 whom I always allow her to select, as of course 
 she knows best.' 
 
 Mary's countenance fell, while Mrs. Penfeather 
 had difficulty in commanding hers. ' I declare 
 that godchild of mine must have a spice of genius,' 
 the elder woman was saying to herself, with an 
 irresistible appreciation of the misunderstanding, 
 ' else she never would have committed such an 
 egregious blunder.'
 
 BY THE ELBE. 351 
 
 Alice Honeywood took her leave with an 
 ardent — it soimded almost a fond — ho]3e, re- 
 sponded to, in comparison, only faintly by Mary, that 
 the acquaintance might be renewed at some future 
 time, when the Carterets should have brouo-ht 
 their travelling to an end, have returned to the 
 Warren, and be revisiting Sandford. 
 
 'There is a girl of another mind from you, 
 Mary,' said Mrs. Penfeather, ' a girl wdio is only 
 thankfnl that her lot is cast in a class in which 
 ■women have neither to toil nor spin. I have a 
 notion that her footing is not secure ; very likely 
 only so long as that brother of hers, whom 
 she seems attached to, poor thing, refrains, on 
 her account, from marrying. Then if she her- 
 self has not managed in tlie meantime to marry 
 advantageously in the neighbourhood, whicli ap- 
 pears to furnisli no society that may contain the 
 elements of such a marriage, she wdll eitlier swell 
 the list of unwilliniT irovernesses or sink into the 
 
 'O iD^ 
 
 doleful substratum of indii^ent jjentlewomen. I 
 have also an idea that she is not altogetJier con- 
 descending to her present line of life, which she 
 takes to so philosophically ; that she has probably 
 risen, rather than sunk, in the scale after slie was 
 privileged to get what is called a good education 
 to fit her for any state of life.' 
 
 ' Do you tlhnk so ? ' asked Mary, witliout much 
 interest in the subject. 
 
 Mrs. Must came in witli the dinner imme-
 
 152 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 diately afterwards, and took it upon her solemnly 
 to warn the ladies that the young lady who had 
 called, was no more than the sister of the 
 young gentleman that looked over those nasty- 
 smelling works, as is kept close — because of their 
 mischief, doubtless, down at the village. She 
 (Mrs. Must) by no means meant to say that the 
 Squire did not know what he was about wdien he 
 granted a lease for these works, which poisoned 
 the air and raised the prices of provisions, though 
 the works did give employment to a new 
 colony — tlie least that was said of it the better — 
 in the village. But she had feared that Miss 
 Honeywood, who gave herself as many airs as a 
 squire's daughter at least, might impose upon the 
 ladies ; whereas she and her brother were merely 
 the orphan nephew and niece of a wealthy brewer 
 in the next town. And he had found that he had 
 enough to do with his money in his own family 
 after he had given his young relations a good 
 education and set themi up a bit in life. 
 
 ' There, I Avill not say I told you so,' observed 
 Mrs. Penfeathcr. when their conscientious informant 
 had left the room. ' I prefer to draw your atten- 
 tion to the fact that Mrs. Must concluded we 
 should be deceived by the very traits which 
 excited my suspicions, if I can call them suspi- 
 cions. I don't propose to deny that Miss Honey- 
 wood is a lady, though it should turn out she has 
 been indebted to an uncle, a brewer, and though
 
 BY THE ELBE. 153 
 
 her brother never had reason to expect to begin 
 hfe in a better position than that of a manager 
 of chemical works. But I fancy it is because Mrs. 
 Must's standard and mine are essentially different 
 that the very circumstance of Miss Honeywood's 
 protesting a shade too much had the contrary 
 effect to what was expected.' 
 
 Mary and Mrs. Penfeather had not done with 
 the Honeywoods. In the evening a gentleman's 
 card was handed in, with a request that the 
 ovv^ner might, if it were convenient, speak with 
 Miss Carteret for a moment, upon business. 
 
 ' There, Mary, is your ambition satisfied ? ' said 
 Mrs. Penfeather, before she read the name. ' You 
 see you are actually regarded as your father's 
 representative. Your cares are accumulating, and 
 my office is not to be a sinecure.' 
 
 ' Look who it is,' said Mary, putting the card 
 across the table to lier companion with a smile. 
 
 ' Oh, he is a more modest man than his sister 
 is a woman,' said Mrs. Penfeather, reading the 
 ' Peter Honeywood, Gorebridge Chemical Works.' 
 ' I hiive always observed that men are more 
 modest in making social advances than women, 
 possibly because they don't put tlie exaggerated 
 value on position which women are impelled to 
 put. He mentions business, and solicits only one 
 moment ; I sliould not wonder but he means 
 business, and will not detain you beyond tlie time 
 specified.'
 
 154 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 When Mr. Honeywood was introduced, lie 
 stated quickly liis object, which was that Mary 
 might put into her father's hands a written com- 
 munication regardino; the lease of the works, 
 which, in other circumstances, must have been 
 sent to Mr. Carteret's man of business, and which 
 the writer had feared mio-ht thus be too late to 
 come under the Squire's j^ersonal notice. The 
 hearers were so satisfied of the young man's 
 sincerity, and propitiated by his personal address, 
 that they were inclined to detain him for a 
 little friendly intercourse. The Czar was a few 
 years older than his sister ; was little where she 
 was tall, and florid where she was sallow. Alto- 
 gether he was the better looking of the two. 
 He had a particularly fresh, pleasant, manly face, 
 full of ready comprehension and practical decision, 
 with wliicli his undersized but very well-knit and 
 active fig-ure suited. 
 
 He was plainer in his manners than his sister 
 was in hers, but while he showed rusticity he was to 
 a great extent without vulgarity. He was enough 
 of a gentleman to be without pretension, and he 
 had the cultivated intellis^ence of an education 
 good in its kind, though it could not give the polish 
 imparted by such a school as Ivy Lodge. His 
 ingenuousness was the genuine quality, and not its 
 highly artificial substitute. 
 
 He had not conversed with his companions 
 five minutes after the business which had brought
 
 BY THE ELBE. 155 
 
 him was disposed of, before lie had mentioned his 
 uncle Jim, the great brewer, and his own special 
 training for the management, and in the end he 
 hoped the proprietorship of the chemical works, 
 ' I showed some aptitude for chemistry,' he added 
 in the next breath, with evident satisfaction, ' when 
 I attended Professor Beaver's classes. Well, I won 
 the gold medal, and the Professor said — if I maybe 
 allowed to repeat such a remark — that he thought 
 my experiments would be heard of yet.' As the 
 speaker finished he blushed a vivid blush of pride 
 and pleasure. 
 
 (' This fine fellow is as vain as a girl, and as 
 credulous. I don't like him nuich the worse for 
 it ; the vanity is so candid as well as so blundering, 
 and the credulity so kindly,' said the astute ob- 
 server ; ' but he is just the man to be wound round 
 a sister's fingers, to the permanent injury of both.') 
 
 Young Honey wood looked happy when an allu- 
 sion was made to his sister. ' Alice is a jolly girl,' 
 he said, heartily ; ' a man need never mope when 
 she is in the house ; and she is a clever manager — 
 I mean with her allowance and her dress.' 
 
 He stopped short, feeling that he might be 
 saying too much, and not so sure of the tone 
 of his present society, or of his falling into tlie 
 tone without misadventure, as Alice had been. 
 Perhaps such young ladies as Miss Carteret of 
 the Warren were not accustomed to hear other 
 young ladies styled 'jolly girls,' even when the
 
 15G BY THE ELBE. 
 
 speaker was the admiring brother of the subject 
 of conversation. In the same way the phrase ' no 
 nonsense about her ' which he had felt tempted 
 to employ, might not be highly acceptable, 
 but be positively offensive to ears polite. And 
 although the Czar did not care immensely for 
 the impression which he made on Miss Carteret 
 and her duenna, as he mentally classed Mrs. Pen- 
 feather, he would decidedly prefer that the im- 
 pression should be favourable in the eyes even of 
 the duenna. lie had an innocent craving, amount- 
 ing to a necessity, to stand well in the esteem of 
 his fellow-creatures. 
 
 He remembered at the last moment an inci- 
 dent which misht liave been made stock of in the 
 unequal chat, and lugged it in then, rather than 
 lose it. 
 
 ' We had a young German fellow — at least he 
 was fresh from a German university — with a card 
 from the Squire — from Mr. Carteret, going over the 
 works the other day. I never heard such a number 
 of questions put more to the point. One would have 
 thought, indeed I had a fear of it, that he was just 
 going into my business ; and we, of all trades, like 
 least to tell our secrets to our neighbours. We 
 have to bind over our men, though we no longer 
 shut them up, to keep their tongues from wagging.' 
 
 'And why should you do so?' said Mary, 
 quickly; 'is not fair competition a stimulus to 
 
 trade ? ' 
 
 ' When it is fair,' he answered, briskly ; ' but
 
 BY THE ELBE. 157 
 
 who shall insure its fairness ? Do you call it fair 
 when a rascal steals into your employment for the 
 purpose of carrpng off the details of your last dis- 
 covery to your rival that he may reap the fruits, 
 for which he never spent many a weary hour 
 and precious sovereign, or that some of your 
 subordinates should break loose from your control 
 and proclaim to the world the raw germ of a com- 
 bination before it is either matured or rendered 
 practical? However, this Mr. Penryn told me 
 that his inclination was more for mechanics, but he 
 was attempting to trace to its legitimate source the 
 relation between chemistry and mechanics, which 
 he compared to that of hydrostatics and hydraulics, 
 and attempted to exemplify by the working of the 
 telegraph. It was a piece of special pleading, hazy 
 and German-like to boot, leading anywhere — or 
 nowhere ; still, he put ten questions, and not idle 
 questions either, I can tell you, where I should 
 have put one, and noted down each ansAver Avitli 
 the greatest care. Think of a fellow capable of 
 giving himself such trouble, giving it for no definite 
 end — for a dream ; ' and Mr. Honey wood arched 
 his brown eyebrows and pressed together his lips 
 in a graphic note of exclamation. 
 
 ' Is there not — I cannot tell, I am only asking,' 
 said Mary, deprecatingly, for she took the young 
 man at his own word, and respected his scientific 
 acquirements — 'pure chemistry, or pure mechanics,
 
 15S BY THE ELBE. 
 
 as well as pure mathematics, into which explorers 
 may penetrate and find hidden treasures ? ' 
 
 ' If such regions existed for the behoof of Don 
 Quixotes,' said Mr. Honeywood, with something of 
 his sister's vivacity, 'I should say they would 
 tend to mere bedlamitism.' 
 
 ' But pure mathematics don't lead to mental 
 aberration ; our first wranglers are not more in- 
 sane than other people.' 
 
 ' Only a little more muddle-headed,' declared 
 Honeywood. 
 
 * And then you must take into account,' said 
 Mrs. Penfeather, ' the great safeguard to German 
 pondering and mysticism which is to be found in 
 habits of absolute truthfulness and faithful accu- 
 racy of observation, together with patient fol- 
 lowing of side influences to their proper results. If 
 German students do not actually attain the goals 
 aimed at, they do very often, whether they stop 
 short or no, pick up pearls by the way. Don't 
 you remember that the shutting up of a philo- 
 sopher in the old castle of Meissen, with what we 
 now judge the foohshly unprofitable intent of for- 
 cing him to devote Iris whole energies to finding the 
 philosopher's stone, was the primary cause of the 
 production of that Dresden china which has proved 
 a valuable aid to the Saxon exchequer, and a 
 source of delight to people of taste and culture to 
 this day ? ' 
 
 ' How fond Mr. Honeywood seems of his
 
 BY THE ELBE. 159 
 
 sister,' said Mary when he was gone. ' How nice 
 it must be for a brother and sister to keep house 
 together, and be such friends as these two are,' 
 she added, with a grieved arriere pensee of her 
 own brothers, who were lost to their sisters by the 
 brothers' fault. 
 
 ' Yes,' answered Mrs. Penfeather, ' under 
 certain conditions, when the sister is not dependent 
 on the brother, so tliat his marriage costs her [i 
 home and a maintenance. If he be induced to 
 count the cost too heavy — well, all that can be 
 said is that it is not good for men in general to 
 marry their sisters any more than for them to 
 marry their grandmothers. Not one man in a 
 hundred can live and die a bachelor for his 
 sister's sake without deterioration ; of course all 
 honour to the hundredth man. Women may 
 accept the sacrifice, if it is not of their ow)i 
 bringing about, without receiving more injury 
 than what may be reflected from the man's falling 
 off. The danger to them is in the temptation to 
 protect themselves at the expense of another ; 
 very often of two others. But what I wish you 
 to take note of, is, that it is another development 
 of the same quality of womanliness Avhich recom- 
 mends justly his mother to Kit Must, that bends 
 with reason Mr. Honeywood's will to his sister's. 
 I was speaking of the dignity and daintiness of the 
 old woman, and here we have the blithe tongue, 
 the ready wit, and no doubt the dexterous hands
 
 160 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 though she pled her uselessness — of tlie young 
 woman. I cannot help thinking, Mary, that what- 
 ever other qualities the exigencies of the times call 
 forth in women, they ought to guard jealously 
 that essential quality of womanliness.'
 
 BY THE ELBE. 161 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 IN THE BtJRGERWIESE. 
 
 The Carterets were off at last, fairly launched 
 on their season of wandering. Mary sometimes 
 called it hopefully their Waiiderschaft, when Mr. 
 Carteret would knock the hope on the head by re- 
 minding her that there was even less probability 
 of the family's returning to the Warren than there 
 had been a likelihood of the Stewarts and the 
 Bourbons coming to their own again. And he 
 admitted a similarity between the private and 
 princely houses in this respect, he was persuaded 
 that, speaking generally, the Carterets also would 
 forget nothing and learn nothing. 
 
 The fresh plunge, when it was made, was 
 speedily over. Very soon Mrs. Carteret ceased to 
 animadvert on the discrepancies between foreign 
 and home life, and Fra and Lyd to complain — a 
 complaint with which Mary had some sympathy, 
 though her tones were less those of conscious 
 injury — that there was really far less difference 
 than there was resemblance between England and 
 the Continent. 
 
 ' Did you expect civilisation to stand still for 
 your benefit, and French artisans or Flemish 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 burghers to show themselves in bonnets rouges, or 
 in white hoods, for your pleasure ? ' demanded. 
 Mr. Carteret of his fair daughters. 
 
 Even what had aroused their attention, at first, 
 as passing strange — had become rapidly stale and 
 flat. A foreign tongue resounding on every side 
 of them, with its wonderfully provoking glibness, 
 which had mortified Fra and Lyd by reducing 
 schoolgirl attainments to their true limit, ceased 
 in its mere echo to ring in their ears with a 
 half-alarming, half-vexing want of familiarity. 
 
 The sandy and marshy lands, cut up by canals, 
 where boats instead of carts formed the mode of 
 communication, no longer struck the travellers 
 as odd and incongruous. They failed to be 
 impressed, though a woman in a blue gown 
 standing up in the stern of a boat would push 
 off from her whitewashed red-tiled house to 
 reach the water-girdled field where her cabbages 
 and French beans grew, or her cow stood ready to 
 be milked — -just as she would be ferried with her 
 prayer book or her laden baskets to church and to 
 market on holidays and fair days. 
 
 Euddy brown or black and white oxen yoked 
 into harness, soberly and very deliberately pacing 
 the fields and dragging behind them loads of 
 clover or of wheat — even as they had trod out the 
 corn in Eastern countries, were too late to beget a 
 Biblical simile. 
 
 Mary, who, as Fra said, gushed, and could
 
 BY THE ELBE. 163 
 
 not be cured of gushing, and who was the most 
 given to ilhistrations, had left off leaning back, 
 looking at the hedgeless plain with its straight 
 poplar or lime-tree bordered roads, and thinking 
 of Charlotte Bronte, or of her creation, Lucy Snow, 
 speeding in her loneliness to fill a hard post in a 
 Belgian school, Mary had given over being 
 carried by a greater leap of the imagination, 
 to Paul Potter and his cattle, to Phihp Wouver- 
 mann and his white horse, to Eubens and 
 his ambassador's splendour and dignity in his 
 chateau, with David Teniers for his next neigh- 
 bour. David, though he also was a seigneur, was 
 vexed with no splendour or dignity — natural or 
 acquired, but was prompted to paint, without 
 the pain or the need of choice, every beer-con- 
 suming kermess held with gross joviality in a 
 circuit of miles. 
 
 Blue blouses were no more conspicuous than 
 moleskin jackets ; they were far less noticeable 
 than the smock frocks which were dying out near 
 the Warren and throughout England. Sabots 
 shared the fate of the blouses. 
 
 Even soldiers in dull blue or red trousers — full 
 at the knee and contracted at the ankle — with shm 
 bodies, twirled moustaches, and dark eyes, came 
 to look exactly like stalwart, pipe-clayed, close- 
 shaven, English soldiers. 
 
 In the towns there was the same passing away, 
 at a casual glance, of novelty and individualit}^ into 
 
 M 2
 
 164 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 world-wide monotony. The figures of the Virgin 
 at the street corners did not provoke Mrs. Carteret's 
 orthodoxy. Mr. Carteret had not occasion to indi- 
 cate the gens ct amies and commend their uniform 
 and disciphne. 
 
 Hay and straw, milk, butter, and eggs, or 
 purple, crimson, golden and russet fruit in the 
 markets in the principal squares were taken as 
 matters of course ; the very peasant costume 
 which the markets showed, the turban handker- 
 chiefs, the winged lace caps, the large straw 
 bonnets, with ribands hanging down the backs — 
 all palled. 
 
 The churches, in which holy water, incense, 
 gorgeous priestly vestments, votive offerings — not 
 to say strange worshippers, had in the early days 
 competed so successfully with the monuments and 
 pictures in the side chapels, that a priest seated in 
 a confessional, his face hid by a napkin and a 
 penitent whispering in his ear, was as engrossing, 
 if not as imposing a spectacle as a Van Dyck or a 
 Eubens, had lost by constant contact. They were 
 regarded listlessly, as common, rather weari- 
 some tasks to be got up, instead of pleasures in 
 which there was a delightful thrill of marvelling 
 and awe to be clutched at greedily. 
 
 The spell of the picture galleries, where each 
 name bore a European renown, and each work 
 had a history worthy of its merit, was gone for 
 all the women of the party save Mary, though
 
 BY THE ELBE. 165 
 
 Lyd was an artist herself in so far as an apprecia- 
 tion of form and colour went. 
 
 The partes cocheres hid nothing. Those cool 
 courts, with spreading vines and swelling grapes on 
 the high walls, and gay little parterres far down 
 a^ if in wells, were as any other gardens. Old 
 houses and crumbUng archways became merged 
 into unsavoury mouldy buildings. 
 
 When the party appeared at the table d'hote 
 the same, and only the same, people presented 
 themselves continually. 
 
 There were the two fast women, the widow 
 and her unmarried sister, who spoke so loudly that 
 they attracted the attention — as they coveted, of 
 the entire table ; and opposite them the clergyman 
 and his shy young daughters, who hardly spoke 
 above their breath. 
 
 There were the two bagmen who called for 
 champagne, and shouted ' gar^on ' ; and there were 
 the elderly widow and her spectacled daughters, 
 who carried their noses in the air and desired 
 to be ticketed ' county people ' — who were so 
 frightened lest they should compromise themselves 
 by speaking to the common herd that they con- 
 fined their overtures towards conversation beyond 
 the family circle, where it was wont to languish, 
 to leading remarks to the head waiter. 
 
 There were the elderly men of the world, 
 slovenly and careless in tlieir dress and manners, 
 who lived in foreign hotels simply because they
 
 166 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 found living tliere clieaper and more palatable 
 than elsewhere, and who, so that their end was 
 served, were indifferent to much else, taking their 
 ease at their inn, ready to make friends Avith jockey 
 or lord, lady of shady reputation or immaculate 
 matron, so that he or she proved good company 
 for the moment. 
 
 Parted from the English by different nationah- 
 ties were the troops of foreig-ners, more or less at 
 home, who, male and female, ate steadily and in 
 a businesslike fashion through every dish of every 
 course, mopping their plates with their bread that 
 no drop of sauce might be lost. Yet some of 
 them found time for animated gesticulating con- 
 versation. To their ranks belonged the spare 
 generals who always looked as if they had been 
 beaten, the stout colonels who, by an inexpli- 
 cable contradiction, had the air of becoming the 
 world's conquerors, and the shabbier counts and 
 barons. These prominent specimens of table dliote 
 humanity were perpetually turning up in fresh 
 development — the development the only thing 
 that was fresh about them — till Fra said she knew 
 their traits as intimately as she had ever known 
 the schoolgirl features of her companions at Miss 
 Bradshaw's school, and it was a positive relief to 
 dine en famille and get rid of the mob of bores. 
 
 Then the Carterets went into Germany, and 
 encountered sandy heaths rather than lands re- 
 deemed from marshes, and found pious inscrip-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 167 
 
 tions in old German characters along the fronts 
 of houses, and in modern German letters over the 
 cabin doors of boats. 
 
 In place of church inspection the travellers 
 were called to attend a never-ending series of 
 concerts and operas, great and small, in pubhc 
 gardens or in private rooms. The rehearsals — 
 in timing of fiddles and sounding of bugles, could 
 be plainly distinguished by the Enghsh visitors, as 
 they were setting out for the Sunday morning 
 service held for their benefit by an expatriated 
 curate, appointed by a considerate bishop or con- 
 vocation to prevent Episcopacy abroad sliding into 
 Roman Catholicism, or latitudinarianism, or any 
 other equally reprehensible ism. 
 
 These were the days of the infliction of wait- 
 in "■ and refreshment rooms combined, in which 
 were gathered together all classes and l^oth sexes 
 — above all, smokers — with every breath of the 
 air of heaven excluded rigidly. The heat and 
 oppression to all, save well-baked and seasoned 
 Germans, with the fumes of beer and tobacco, 
 used to try even Mary's endurance. They pro- 
 voked her to lose her indulgence for some of those 
 students in the white caps and the jackboots, with 
 the tassel-fringed pipes, who seemed to her at once 
 so simple and so earnest, and reminded her of 
 young Penryn, wasting his days in the search 
 after perpetual motion. 
 
 At last, when the youngest and fondest of change
 
 168 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 among the Carterets was, to her surprise and dis- 
 coinfitiire, wearied out by her taste of vagabondism 
 — vagabondism, hke any other calhng deserving 
 the name, needing a regular apprenticeship to 
 qualify an aspirant for fully appreciating its merits 
 — Mr. Carteret decided on settling down with his 
 family, for a year, in a hired house in some suitable 
 town. He was led to fix on Dresden, partly 
 because of its ancient reputation for inexpensive- 
 ness, partly from a vague idea of his daughters 
 profiting by its artistic advantages, and still more 
 on account of the circumstance that when he 
 was a young man, in the interval between his 
 leaving Cambridge and succeeding to the Warren, 
 he had at the same time economised his slender 
 income and indulged his artistic propensity by 
 passing a winter there. That had been a fairly 
 happy winter, and Mr. Carteret recurred to it 
 wistfully after the lapse of years, when his camp 
 was again shifted, and he was once more going here 
 and there, free to push on, or to call a halt, as the 
 inchnations of his family at the moment, prompted. 
 This uprooted condition, which enabled them 
 to float hither and thither, with the utmost liberty 
 of sinking down and remaining still when and 
 where they would, constituted a more wearing, 
 fretting trial to poor Mr. Carteret than to his wife 
 or to any of his children. Yet when he did bring 
 it to an end he had a strong suspicion that every 
 circumstance which had made his residence in Dres-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 169 
 
 den pleasant to him in old times had either ceased 
 to exist or undergone a complete transformation. 
 
 Just as flocks of the English and Americans 
 who had alighted on Dresden for gesthetical pur- 
 poses were fluttermg angrily away before the 
 higher prices which their own preference and the 
 cost of a glorious and successfid war had in- 
 duced, Mr. Carteret took a furnished house in the 
 Blirgerwiese — 'that Saxon Park Lane,' as he called 
 it with a hstless jest — and established his family 
 in it. 
 
 If even Era and Lyd were glad to find rest 
 for the soles of their restless feet — or, speaking 
 more graphically, the high tapping heels of their 
 boots — Mary, who was emphatically a home bird, 
 rejoiced exceedingly in even a temporary home. 
 She was pleased with the row of spacious white 
 houses, facing grounds with green turf, shady 
 trees and bushes, and rustic seats in common — ex- 
 tending between the people's park of the Grosse 
 Garten and the streets, where every second shop 
 is an artist's studio or displays paintings in china, 
 from large copies of great pictures to audacious 
 liliputian editions of the same which may be set 
 and hung in the ears or worn on the fingers. 
 
 Besides those common grounds, each house 
 had its own vine or hop trellis, small shrubbery, 
 and larger garden ; though, as the houses as a rule 
 were let in separate etages, perhaps the house 
 gardens were httle less common than the grounds
 
 170 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 over the way. But Mr. Carteret had hit upon a 
 house which, when he took the first etage, was 
 otherwise unoccupied. 
 
 Mary inchned kindly to the place almost 
 from the beginning ; so kindly that she half re- 
 proached herself with becoming unfaithful to the 
 dear old Warren, which, in its chronicle of succes- 
 sive generations in the out-of-date furniture within 
 the circumscribed walls, was a sort of English 
 domestic version and pocket copy of the Elgin 
 marbles or the Bayeux tapestry. She could not be 
 imtrue to her first love, with its manifold associa- 
 tions ; yet she could not help prizing the German 
 home. 
 
 It is true she had seen with a little dismay at 
 first the draughty paved hall on which the great 
 door opened, the wide common staircase, and 
 the rooms opening out of each other, so that the 
 drawing-room was entered from the dining-room 
 and her own room from that of Era and Lyd. 
 And she had not been favourably impressed by 
 the dining-room, barer than the best parlour at 
 Sandford, literally furnished with no more than a 
 long table and a set of chairs — a ' feeding-room,' 
 as Era called it contemptuously. 
 
 However, the salon, or besuchzimmer, beyond 
 made up for it. Not that its furniture was 
 otherwise than scanty also to English eyes ; but 
 its exceeding brightness, airiness, and cheerful- 
 ness, with its artistic contrasts, were redeeming
 
 BY THE ELBE. 17 1 
 
 features. It was a large lofty room, Avitli the 
 creamy white walls painted in slight frescoes of 
 fruit and flowers, executed by a few clever touches ; 
 for the Carterets were dwelling in a city of art since 
 the era of Augustus the Strong, so that even the 
 common staircase had rough but effective frescoes, 
 and each landing-place was marked by the repre- 
 sentation of a vase with flowers. The floor, in 
 contrast to the delicate walls, was of wood stained 
 a ripe brown and parqueted in chequers. There 
 were soft richly coloured footcloths, mellowed by 
 age — before the single round table with its equally 
 deep tinted cover, behind which was the sofa of 
 honour, for the mistress of the house and her most 
 distinguished guest — as well as before the grand 
 piano, the most conspicuous article of furniture in 
 the room. The Berlin ofen^ or white porcelain 
 stove, was the best substitute for a glowing fire. 
 The chairs were mostly of bent wood or Avicker- 
 work ; but their covers were of elaborate em- 
 broidery, the Avork of busy skilled fingers, and so 
 was the border of the velvet portiere which hung 
 before the door. In the windows were writing;- 
 tables and flower-stands, surrounded with trellis- 
 work, and crowned by arches, round which ivy had 
 been trained and cared for till it clustered in close 
 screens and wreaths of deep glossy green, and 
 within which stood the pot with the huge myrtle, 
 which Era and Lyd concluded was furnished by an 
 equally sentimental and provident landlord in the
 
 172 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 prospect of their marriages. The sills of the win- 
 dows were broad and well cushioned, and formed 
 resting-places far more social and luxurious than 
 the single chairs in the little window recesses at the 
 Warren. The great Biirgerwiese windows opened 
 in the centre, like doors. Against the wall at 
 each side hung mirrors, which reflected peeps 
 of such daily comings and goings in the road 
 beyond the gates, as neither ash nor laburnum 
 avenue at home had witnessed in the whole course 
 of their existence. 
 
 Mary had even a good word to say for the 
 bedrooms, in their absolute simplicity. She did 
 not cry out at the absence of pink and white 
 muslin, cheval mirrors and wardrobes, engravings 
 and knickknackS; as the other two girls protested. 
 Here too were space, air, coolness in summer, and 
 warmth, if it were stove warmtli, in winter ; 
 and there Avere little bookcases hanging on the 
 walls, sclirclnke or cupboards which might contain 
 all kinds of working materials, and bird cages, albeit 
 empty, in eacli window. Even an attempt had 
 been made, though Mary felt that it was just a 
 shade too ^estlietic and must be discouraged, to 
 introduce and train ivy over the washhandstands. 
 
 The Carterets took possession of their house or 
 etage in the Biirgerwiese in the autumn, and by 
 the following spring Dresden had become to them 
 like a book, the pleasant pages of which they had 
 turned and conned over and over again. The Alt
 
 BY THE ELBE, 173 
 
 and the Neu Markt, See Strasse, Walpurgis, and 
 Luttichaii Strassen were household words. Equally 
 famiUar landmarks were the Frauen Kirche and 
 the Kreuz Kirche, the Hof Kirche and Sophien 
 Kirche. The Zwinger was a morning and the 
 Hof theater an evening haunt ; to the last girls 
 could go as they rose from dinner or coffee, in a 
 group or singly, unmarked and unmolested, so 
 that even a scrupulous matron like Mrs. Car- 
 teret had no occasion to interpose or enter her 
 veto, particularly when it was impressed upon her 
 that the operas and plays patronised in Ger- 
 many are, for the most part, of a higher order 
 than those popular in England. Wlien a little 
 variety was sought, there were the Green Vaults 
 (where a roc's egg must have lain hidden), the 
 Japanese Palace, and the different musical so- 
 cieties' concerts, always being held in one hall or 
 another, in some district of the town. 
 
 Many a half-hour liad Mary and her father 
 walked to and fro on the Briihl Terrace watching 
 the Elbe, frozen stiff and solid, affording a 
 white highway for pedestrians, or flowing full 
 and free, bearing on its broad bosom many a 
 barge and smaller craft, and especially the long 
 rafts, sinuous as serpents, guided by men with 
 poles — the water rising and gurgling about the 
 steersmen's feet. The progress of these rafts, which 
 appeared in the same fashion as they had come 
 from the depths of the forest, always floating down
 
 174 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 and down, till at last they and their hardy 
 steerers reached Magdeburg or Hamburg, fasci- 
 nated Mary. 
 
 The father and daughter would pause on 
 the older bridge. This was the very bridge across 
 which an etiquette-fettered princess had long 
 sighed in vain to walk on foot like her father's 
 unhampered burgher subjects, till a great revolu- 
 tion burst over the world, scattered crowns and 
 sceptres to the winds, turned thrones topsy-turvy, 
 and blew up part of this very bridge, but first 
 enabled the exceedingly human princess to attain 
 her modest desire. Was it as sweet in the realisa- 
 tion as it had been in the fancy ? 
 
 Walking in the ordinary mode and unnoticed 
 over bridges was not such a rarity to Mr. Carteret 
 and Mary, and when they stood still it was not to 
 gloat over the fulfilment of a long-cherished and 
 despaired-of vision, but to regard at leisure the 
 best view of the town. By turning one's back on 
 the copper roof of the Japanese Palace in the 
 Neu Stadt, there was obtained in the Altstadt a 
 group — with its objects rising one above each other, 
 of the cupola of the Hof Kirche, and that of the 
 Frauen Kirche, the spire of the palace, and the 
 twin spires of Sophien Kirche. But Dresden at 
 the best has little to offer of architectural beauty ; 
 and the gazers were more tempted to look up 
 and down the river, the vineclad schloss or 
 villa-decked banks of which are charming in
 
 BY THE ELBE. 175 
 
 summer and attractive at all seasons, where the 
 clear blue shoulder of a mountain which be- 
 longs to Saxon Switzerland closes the vista above, 
 and the picturesque heights of Meissen end it 
 below. 
 
 On other occasions the two companions strolled 
 through the squares when the air above was as 
 deliciously crisp as the snow below, where it had 
 lent a white coating to the armour of August den 
 Stai'hen or lay in powder on the head of Friedrich 
 August in their copper and bronze monuments. 
 Mary and her father watched the country women 
 in the homespun petticoats and dark jackets, 
 with the bright-coloured blue, red or yellow 
 kerchiefs tied under their broad chins, or the 
 warm woollen hoods di'awn well over their faces, 
 as they chaffered over golden oranges and brown 
 bread, dried fish and dried apples, cans of coffee 
 and rows of shoes. 
 
 Closely intermingled with the traffickers and 
 with the passing droschkies — the drivers of which 
 looked half mihtary and wholly picturesque in 
 their blue riding coats with red collars, were 
 constantly straying tame flocks of blue and white 
 pigeons.
 
 176 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 HOW THE FAMILY, INCLUDING FKA AND LYD, SPENT 
 
 THEIR TIME, 
 
 The Carterets, when they took up house, knew 
 nobody in Dresden save an aged teacher of Mr. 
 Carteret in the days when he was a young man 
 and studied art in Dresden. 
 
 Mr. Carteret did not think it consistent with 
 the position of an embarrassed man seeking to 
 retrench his expenses that he should avail himself 
 of his privilege of being presented at Court in 
 order to receive invitations to Court bails and 
 concerts, a view of matters which greatly exercised 
 the spirits of Fra and Lyd. 
 
 The family made and received visits from none 
 save slight acquaintances until far on into the 
 winter, when the gay season was nearly over, 
 though Dresden had its ordinary complement of 
 Enghsh residents, — so great as to cause a part of 
 the town in the direction of Walpurgis Strasse to 
 be relegated to their necessities and dubbed, in 
 reference to them, 'the Enghsh Quarter.' 
 
 The members of the household settled perforce
 
 BY THE ELBE. 177 
 
 into their various grooves, to be faithfully kept or 
 eagerly abandoned as time modified the circum- 
 stances or inclination prompted the change. 
 
 The Squire was the most to be pitied, for in 
 forsaking his home he had left his occupation 
 also behind him ; and thouo-h he was better 
 furnished with resources than many of his class, 
 while he had the firmness of mind which tends 
 to resignation, he could not fail to feel acutely — so 
 soon as the small excitement of continually moving 
 on was given up — the reverse in his position, the 
 loss of all occasion for active exertion, together 
 with the relinquishment of influence and authority. 
 The natural effect was the stai2;nation of a life 
 in which there were as few duties as there were 
 cares. 
 
 Mr. Carteret did what he could to render his 
 life more honourable and less irksome. As Mary 
 had once said of him, he was too good to rust 
 out. But the effort was harder work than the 
 gravest failures and heaviest disappointments of 
 his previous hfe had been. It was sadly per- 
 ceptible to one pair of loving eyes at least, how 
 rapidly he aged under the inaction and the arbi- 
 trary artificial engagements which he chalked out 
 for himself and followed up with something like 
 sternness. 
 
 His irongrey hair seemed to whiten daily, the 
 change on the fresh colour of his prime to the 
 mottled and streaked purple-red of an aging man 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 became always more conspicuous, his bulk hung 
 more loosely and heavily upon him, until he took 
 to using a stick in good earnest when he walked 
 out, while his broad shoulders grew rounder and 
 rounder. His wife and he had been fairly matched 
 when they married. Now the neat daintily got 
 up little woman, whom new scenes and travels 
 served only to brace and brighten, had been 
 more than once mistaken, in spite of the knit 
 between her brows and the metallic ring in her 
 voice, for her husband's eldest daughter. 
 
 'By a first and remote marriage,' Fra had 
 added condescendingly. 
 
 Mr. Carteret joined the English Club, and 
 made himself a useful member there, especially in 
 restraining by his presence and tone, the ebullitions 
 of the younger and more erratic spirits. He 
 offered himself for a churchwarden, and did 
 what he could in support of the little alien 
 church, though he declined to take upon himself 
 the offices which belonged to the clergyman, or 
 any of what were to him the small details of 
 choir boys and disputed floral decorations. He 
 did not refuse his services from peculiar views, 
 but said, ' Let the clergyman stick to his cloth, 
 and let me stick to mine. I am only a priest 
 to my own family ; if I can be of any use, 
 and have not to content myself with doing no 
 mischief now-a-days, it must be as a layman 
 to the rest of the world and to the end of the
 
 BY THE ELBE. 179 
 
 chapter ; as for the boys and the flowers, they 
 may be in your mother's way, they are not in 
 mine.' 
 
 He tried to renew his acquaintance with 
 German, and found even reading the newspapers 
 a drudgery after an interval of many years of 
 unfamiharity with the language ; but he per- 
 severed in his task, and read also, along with his 
 daughter Mary, Goethe and Schiller, Herder and 
 Neander, every day. He visited the theatre with 
 his daughters, every time a serious play was acted, 
 and listened with some appreciation, even through 
 the long political discussions of Wallenstein, which 
 Germans of the present day hear with so much 
 zest. He set himself to translate the first of a series 
 of German works, bearing on morals, political 
 economy, and ethics, which, if he were ever able 
 to finish them, and if any publisher could be found 
 public spirited enough to face the pecuniary risk of 
 giving them to the world, might, Mr. Carteret 
 imagined, benefit such of his countrymen as would 
 read them. He painted also, taking simple sub- 
 jects for his study, and working in the Gallery 
 among a host of other professionals and amateurs — 
 both ladies and gentlemen, some of them as stout 
 and as grey as the Squire ; but he complained that 
 his hand had grown stiff and his eye dim, and that 
 any power which he had ever possessed of catch- 
 ing a master's meaning, had dwindled away to a 
 fraction. He did not explain that his mind was 
 
 N 2
 
 180 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 haunted and disturbed by the constant presence 
 with him of a young, hopeful, ahnost enthusiastic 
 man, having an honourable happy life before 
 him, who had once stood before a similar easel and 
 plied brush and maulstick. 
 
 Mr. Carteret had his htorse and rode regularly ; 
 he even resorted to relinquished recreations, to 
 keep down the growing stoutness and heaviness 
 which had now no trudojes over the fields to 
 restrain them. He tried skating again, and played 
 rackets as well as billiards at his club. He even 
 danced with his daughters of an evening. But 
 whatever he did or did not do, he never fell into 
 habits of dawdling, gossiping, slipshod idleness. 
 He never resorted to any company, even the 
 least worthy, as better than none, and as all the 
 more available since the man was out of bounds 
 and beyond the ken of old associates. He never 
 sank to swallowing a variety and constant 
 succession of stimulants, playing with very earth- 
 born fire, as all the refuge that was left from dire 
 dulness and intolerable discontent. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret was certainly better off in the 
 common sense. Mary had sometimes asked herself, 
 with considerable doubt, what was to become of 
 her mother when her household, her village clubs 
 and meetings, and her society were all dissolved 
 like the baseless fabric of a dream. But now it 
 seemed that the smaller mind, holding its activities 
 more stringently and more within itself, had
 
 BY THE ELBE. 181 
 
 carried a larger provision for energy and enjoy- 
 ment along with it. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret, who had really an organising 
 and executive faculty, had developed an absolute 
 genius for controlhng the ways and means of 
 travel, and had rehshed not only the power 
 which had been till then nascent, but the depen- 
 dence of her family on her skill, and their grati- 
 tude for her success. 
 
 Established in Dresden, Mrs. Carteret was 
 once more the centre of a household. Though it 
 was a greatly diminished household, the fact of 
 the diminution only enabled her to concentrate 
 her energies in bringing about its nearest approach 
 to perfection. And the foreign ingredient in it 
 afforded endless provocation for reform, seeing 
 that Mrs. Carteret was one of the many English 
 abroad who either see no merit in the customs 
 of the land which shelters them, or, at the 
 utmost, none to detract from the transcendent 
 superiority of English methods and habits. 
 
 With Mrs. Carteret, to see superiority was to 
 strain after it, in the most adverse circumstances, 
 with a passion that was almost pathetic. 
 
 But to have a purpose and pursue it ardently 
 is no misfortune. Thus Mrs. Carteret's mind 
 and time were well filled in regulating with 
 finest nicety the little household. She strove 
 to bring the minds of nurse and James — the 
 English servants — into a state of reconciliation
 
 182 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 with the situation. She laboured also to instil 
 into the denser minds of Dorte the cook and Ursel 
 the housemaid, who appeared in the morning in 
 bright pink or blue aprons with bibs, and always 
 carried the keys of office dangling by their sides, 
 faint comprehension of English ideas of diet and 
 tidiness. 
 
 Beyond her own family, Mrs. Carteret eco- 
 nomised and cultivated the scraps of Enghsh 
 society she could pick up, and above all made 
 such excellent use of the httle Enghsh church 
 with its dehcate young bachelor clergyman, that 
 she was in all respects, to the promotion of her 
 health of body and peace of mind, as busy a 
 woman as she had been at home. 
 
 With regard to the last interest, she felt it so 
 heavy an obligation on her, seeing that there were 
 only one or two other devoted English matrons of 
 the same mind as herself, whom she could trust, 
 and with whom she could divide the responsibility, 
 that she had even gone some length in pressing 
 Mary into the service. 
 
 But, to Mary's relief, she found a mode of 
 escape, since she had no more turn for choir boys 
 and for the adoption or rejection of floral emblems 
 than her father possessed, while she had a troubled 
 conviction that if her mother caused her to take 
 them up, ^irs. Carteret would never rest till she 
 inducecl Mary to make them her sole study. She 
 would be forced to become such an adept in
 
 EY THE ELBE. 183 
 
 smooth round heads in keeping with smooth sur- 
 pHces, sober faces, fitting positions, regular attend- 
 ance, consistent practice — not to say in the bringing 
 forward or the putting back of bouquets of liUes 
 and crosses of roses — as not Dresden, not England 
 could match. And this would be a token which 
 would imply that Mary, whose first duty as she 
 had always believed was to her father, had ceased 
 to be a daughter, and was transformed into a 
 finical female cm-ate. 
 
 However Fra, and Lyd with her, in a whim of 
 the former's, stepped into the breach and improved 
 the occasion by leading the fallible young clergy- 
 man to the verge of indiscretion and neglect of 
 his duties — so that Mrs. Carteret laid down the 
 law that thenceforth all Mr. Moseley's female 
 assistants with whom she would have anytliing to 
 do, must be matrons of mature years. 
 
 As it was, Mary did not find her time hang 
 heavy on her hands, or any special paucity in her 
 occupations and interests — though she missed her 
 garden and the fields almost as mucli as her 
 father missed them. And there was one lamenta- 
 tion of the mild young clergyman's with which 
 she was far more inclined to sympathise than 
 with his choir troubles or floral partialities and 
 antipathies. She, too, missed her poor, her familiar 
 friends among the poor, her father's superannuated 
 or burdened and ailing servants, as young Mr. 
 Moseley missed his poor of the schools, the cot-
 
 184 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 tages, and the almshouses. Mary used to recall 
 wistfully and sorrowfully the Lord's words, that 
 the poor would be with men always, and to fear 
 that the family were in an unnatural injurious 
 condition when they could count no poor in their 
 congregation, and when the various Vereine for 
 the improvement of the hardfaring of their German 
 neighbours were not for the Carterets at this stage 
 of their experience. Then her father comforted her 
 by pointing out to her, that though the primary 
 meaning of the words was as she read it, 
 still, even as the poor of Gahlee and Juda3a 
 eighteen hundred years ago must have been 
 totally distinct from the poor of England to-day, 
 so doubtless the Lord intended that poverty should 
 have a far wider sio;nification than the mere scar- 
 city of worldly goods — of gold and silver, food and 
 clothing. 
 
 She had her father requiring her company in 
 most of the pursuits which were left to him. 
 She had her own young fresh researches into 
 untried fields, her lively investigations into, and 
 appreciation of, the strange social hfe around her. 
 It was not from sheer dearth of employment and 
 the impending horrors of ennui, as in the case of 
 Fra when she consented to take more lessons in 
 music, any more than it was from Lyd's pro- 
 pensity to imitation, that Mary provided herself 
 with two new resources. She went thrice a 
 week to a studio in See Strasse in order to learn 
 to dabble on her own account in painting on
 
 BY THE ELBE. 185 
 
 china, tliat she might be able to present a plate 
 of her embellishment to every member of her 
 family on his or her birthday. She received in 
 her own room, in the house in the Blirgerwiese, 
 a yoimg Friiulein who was an adept in the branch 
 of flower painting, which had a peculiar charm 
 for Mary, and who, for a solid equivalent, was 
 pledged to impart so much of her taste and 
 knowledge with her lio;htness of touch as was 
 transferable. 
 
 It was otherwise with Fra and Lyd. Very 
 soon they had, as they announced confidently, 
 ' done ' Dresden from Friedrich Stadt to Anton 
 Stadt, and from the Leipziger to the Bohmisher 
 Bahnhof; from the statues of the Girls of Her- 
 culaneum, and the most primitive pipkin in the 
 Japanese Palace to the last work of the last 
 German artist in the Kunstverein. 
 
 Then the girls were attacked in different 
 degrees of severity with ' a vague disease ' which 
 had its root in listlessness and idleness, and suf- 
 fered such torments of restlessness as may have 
 been experienced by the little devils assigned to 
 Michael Scott, when their potent master could 
 find nothing on earth for them to do, and before 
 they turned and preyed upon their owner as a 
 final refuge. 
 
 The girls were so far subdued by becoming 
 plagues to themselves as well as to their neigh- 
 bours, that Fra submitted to take those music
 
 186 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 lessons which have been spoken of. She was told 
 in the first instance, with all the coolness of im- 
 mense superiority and intimate acquaintance with 
 the subject, that her prized power of performance, 
 which she had acquired by means of what Fra 
 considered most laudable energy and application 
 as well as great original genius — was worth less 
 than nothing. She was bidden begin all over 
 again from the beginning, by striking single notes 
 and running up simple scales. This was an 
 introductory process that must last for months, 
 while the succeeding stages — which miglit be 
 attained if the pupil gave up her whole time and 
 attention to the gentle science and worked at the 
 normal rate of six or eight hours a day — would 
 come in a period of years that ought to leave Fra 
 venerable, according to her own reckoning. Nay, 
 to heap insult on insult, this self-asserting aspiring 
 Fra was told that her fingers — her taper white 
 fingers, which nobody had ever dreamt before of 
 slandering, were deformed for musical purposes, 
 and that she must put herself under a physician's 
 care to have the crippled members manipulated, 
 bent, and dragged into the proper stretch and 
 suppleness. 
 
 It need not be said that Fra retired in disgust 
 from this austere professor, and contented herself 
 with a master of less tremendous attainments and 
 more lenient judgment. 
 
 Lyd instantly agreed to have further instruction
 
 BY THE ELBE. 187 
 
 in drawing ; and, as her resolution took lier more 
 into her father's and Mary's company, and withdrew 
 her a httle from Fra's constant influence, a shade 
 of tremulous uncertamty and of veering round to 
 old standards, became perceptible about this time 
 in Lyd's conduct. 
 
 But just at the critical moment a new element 
 was introduced into the position, which ended by 
 separating Lyd as well as Fra completely from 
 the others, and by allying them together more 
 closely than ever. 
 
 Through an English acquaintance the girls got 
 an introduction to the Griifin von Hersfeld, 
 w^hose husband held a good official position, and 
 who herself was a power in the best Dresden 
 circles. 
 
 In addition to her other advantages, the Griifin 
 had travelled and was a fair English scholar ; and 
 it was her will and pleasure to throw open her 
 house to all English of due rank, and especially 
 to cultivate the friendship of such English residents 
 in Dresden as coidd give her the opportunity of 
 airing her Enghsh conversation and prosecuting 
 what she chose to consider her studies of English 
 character. 
 
 The Graf of this well-armed Griifin was a 
 somewhat stolid, extremely good-natured man. 
 He never thought of coutradictuig his wife, who 
 had been an heiress as well as a beauty in her 
 own person, unless, indeed, her projects threatened
 
 188 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 expense, against which he was obdurate ; other- 
 wise he made the Griifin's Enghsh friends very- 
 welcome to his house. 
 
 Era and Lyd exactly suited the purpose of 
 the fanciful Grafin ; whereas Mr. Carteret was too 
 serious, and Mrs. Carteret too stiff, even if they 
 could have been tempted to enter foreign society 
 as often as the hospitably inclined Saxon countess 
 would have had them to do. As for Mary, she 
 was too single-hearted, too apt to be in earnest, 
 and had too much reserve in her frankness to 
 answer the Grafin's end. 
 
 In addition to the intellectual gratification, 
 the means of display and source of flattery to 
 her vanity wliich Fra and Lyd supphed, the 
 two girls were attractions in the Grafin's draw- 
 ing-room, in her carriage, and in her box at 
 the theatre. They were new ; Fra was very 
 pretty, while her tart wit and her vagaries, if 
 they did not quite go down with the German 
 notions of the docility and solidity which ought 
 to distinguish a gracious young lady, still had the 
 advantage of agreeably exciting and amusing an 
 unconcerned audience. 
 
 Not that the Grafin desired her company to 
 remain individually unmoved by the sparkling of 
 the English stars which she had brought within 
 their firmament ; one of her many lively, varied, 
 and sometimes perilous propensities was match- 
 making.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 189 
 
 It was true that tlie Carterets openly admitted 
 themselves to be poor, and to be living abroad to 
 retrench their expenses. 
 
 IVir. Carteret, though he did not crave pity, or 
 practise covert boasting by dwelling on the extent 
 of his embarrassments at home, made no secret of 
 them. 
 
 Even Fra, who was the most ambitious in a 
 certain sense of the family, and the most given 
 to brandishing her rights, never hesitated to 
 proclaim that she and her sisters were as poor 
 as church mice. Fra's candour, with her habitual 
 buoyancy, which had in it in these days a con- 
 siderable infusion of good nature, were her best 
 natural qualities. 
 
 But there is poverty and poverty. The Car- 
 terets, in the ignorance and innocence of their 
 hearts, kept up a kind of style, in contrast with 
 the simple establishments, even of members of 
 the Court circle around them, which made a 
 decided impression on the natives. 
 
 Doubtless these pretty high-spirited Mees 
 Carterets, in spite of their father's difficulties, would 
 still command large enough portions out of the 
 wrecks of a great English fortune, or estate — rich 
 in coal and iron mines, or in the ground rents 
 of the countless groups of mills and rows of 
 houses of some great manufa':^turiug city, to be 
 no mean addition to the modest income of a 
 German officer or noble landbesitzer, whose land
 
 100 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 consisted of poor ryefields and patches of un- 
 profitable vineyards, varied by a tract of moor- 
 land or a rocky mountain. 
 
 The Grafin was distinctly of that opinion, and 
 clear in the determination to secure, if possible, 
 the English originality and independence which 
 charmed herself, as well as the English dowry 
 which would substantially profit him, to some 
 man of her set. Even if she were not entirely 
 successful, there was the zest lent to life by the 
 excitement and uncertainty of the enterprise while 
 it lasted, and there was the entertainment pro- 
 vided for third parties by the contemplation of 
 the contest. 
 
 To do the Grafin justice, she had no intention 
 of taking unfair advantage of her foreign guests, 
 neither would she bear any malice if her ' fight 
 blues,' her young officials on the civil list, or 
 her country neighbours come to spend a few 
 weeks in town, proved too lethargic or too pru- 
 dent to undertake the guidance of headstrong and 
 volatile partners ; or, if the girls, or what was 
 more probable, their friends for them, declined 
 the honour of the alliance. 
 
 As for Era and Lyd, they were enchanted 
 by the Grafin's graceful overtures, and lent them- 
 selves readily to her designs. Foreign society 
 had quite as much piquancy for them as they 
 could have for foreign society. Soon the younger 
 members of the Carteret family were as full as
 
 BY THE ELBE. 191 
 
 tliey had been empty of engagements, and fulfilled 
 their strongest hopes, through the Grafin von 
 Hersfeld's instrumentality. Fra and Lyd had the 
 benefit of the close of the Dresden season. They 
 made more of what they considered delightfully 
 available acquaintances, among the gayest of their 
 own country people and of Americans, as well as 
 Germans, than they knew what to do with. The 
 girls had invitations for every night in the week 
 to dances and larger balls, to private theatricals, 
 to help to form parties to the opera or to some 
 of the many concerts. 
 
 All this gaiety, which was simple enough in 
 some respects, appeared splendid to the unfledged 
 girls. Many a time Fra would cry exultingly to 
 Lyd, ' This is not like the point lace working or the 
 practising evenings at the Warren, or the sleepy 
 dinners at the Fullers' and the Wallises', or the 
 choir or the Dorcas meetings, eh, Lyd? ' 
 
 And Lyd would parody and out-herod Fra 
 by railing in good set terms, in Mary's wincing 
 ears, at that miserable old sleepy hollow, the 
 Warren, and by fervently trusting the family would 
 never go back to it again. 
 
 The gaiety was not confined to the evenings. 
 There were promenades on the Briihl Terrace, or 
 drives to the Grosse Garten, coffee parties in 
 private houses which answered to English five 
 o'clock teas, saunterings in the galleries, shop- 
 pings in company, and receptions at home. At
 
 192 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 last, Fra and Lyd were permitted to hold a 
 court of their young companions and partners 
 often graciously presided over by the Grlifin — 
 seeing that the conversation was as much in 
 French and German as in broken English, and Mrs. 
 Carteret's French was not at her finger-ends, while 
 her entire unacquaintance with the German lan- 
 guage, which she declined to take steps to remove, 
 disqualified her from being more than a neat little 
 automaton of a chaperon. 
 
 Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Carteret interfered with 
 this sudden tide of girlish dissipation. They 
 were both satisfied that the Von Hersfelds were 
 respectable people of their class, and would 
 receive none but warranted members into their 
 community. Besides the heads of the house in 
 the Blirgerwiese were pleased with the earliness of 
 foreign hours, and with a kind of artlessness 
 and homeliness which is to be found in German 
 gaiety. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret held that it was natural Fra 
 and Lyd should go out and mix with young 
 people of their own age ; it was their time for 
 such pleasures ; she did not desire to have her 
 daughters with other tastes and aspirations than 
 became their years and their station in life. After 
 a speech of this kind she would busy herself in 
 procuring a particular shade of riband which Fra 
 had failed to obtain, or a flower from the Winter 
 Garden on which Lvd had set her heart, and feel 
 
 9 1
 
 BY THE ELBE. 193 
 
 amply repaid by a half-niocking recognition of 
 lier ability from Fra, or a careless kiss from Lyd. 
 Mr. Carteret had a system of non-interference 
 witli the acts of his family, whether sons or 
 daughters, so soon as they ceased to be children, 
 the judiciousness of which, where girls were con- 
 cerned, Mary was inclined to doubt. But she 
 could say for her father in this instance that, 
 living much in his study, he was largely un- 
 acquainted w^itli the dissipation of mind and 
 frivolity of spirit to which Fra and Lyd's gadding 
 tended. ' If papa could only hear the conversa- 
 tion with some of these " light blues," whose 
 belles the Grafin says they are,' said Mary, in 
 elderly sister trouble. Then she began to pass in 
 review, as far as her memory would let her, the 
 scraps of social intercourse which came to her 
 ears. What had the talk been about that 
 day? Of whether Lyd was growing a double 
 chin ; and if that ivere tlie Ilerr Hauptman, 
 or merely Mr. Ladbrook who rode past ; and 
 whether the new tenor justified public expectation 
 the night before. Yesterday the conversation, 
 when it diverfjed from Fra's absurd sutrcfestion 
 that the tea-rose which she w^as pulling to pieces 
 would exactly suit the darkest lieutenant's com- 
 plexion, was, if their Griihn, wdio was not present 
 on this occasion, did or did not look her best at 
 her party the night before, and what was the 
 meaning of Madame Dahl's coming into the room 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 BY THE ELBR. 
 
 before Madame Leypold ; with a dissertation on 
 the performance of the favourite soprano, which 
 somebody had heard in spite of the party. The 
 day before yesterday there must have been a 
 question of the second tenor or the contralto to 
 oive weiijfht to the chatter on themselves, their 
 dress, and their doings. 
 
 There was one thing which Fra and Lyd had 
 learned durins; this last month in Dresden, and 
 that was to discourse with affected technical 
 knowledge and high critical powers — not so much 
 on the operas themselves, but on this tenor's bass 
 and that soprano's high notes, as if these were the 
 sole topics of interest, from without, on which it 
 was worth while to bestow a moment's earnest 
 consideration. The girls miglit be qualifying 
 themselves for writing the musical critique in 
 some fashionable journal. Mary did not doubt 
 that Fra would undertake it, but as the elder 
 sister held that there must be considerably better 
 qualified aspirants, in spite of the girl's preten- 
 sions, for the post, she thought the labour of 
 acquiring the necessary qualifications a consider- 
 able waste of time and trouble. 
 
 Yet the girls' partners in the conversation 
 were the men who within three years' time had 
 carried the war from the frontier into the heart of 
 the enemy's country, and come back crowned 
 with laurels before approving Europe ; and among 
 them were some of the women who had sent
 
 BY THE ELBE. 195 
 
 away their heroes, and welcomed the survivors 
 home with a passion of homage. 
 
 Mary knew that they were capable of better 
 words, not to say better deeds. Was not this 
 pre-eminently the land of geist? The Griifin 
 herself was intelligent and well-informed, and she 
 had pointed out several of her circle to Mary as 
 deserving of note — the girl with the long plaits 
 hanging down her back, was a promising poetess ; 
 the young man with the brown beard had written 
 — an opera natm^ally. 
 
 Mary liked to see the Germans' anxiety to 
 perfect their English, which was visible in the 
 most childish discussions. The red-faced Colonel 
 gave manly rejoinders to Fra's supercilious com- 
 ments on his experience of London. Of course he 
 had been at the Tower, which she thousfht fit, and 
 was not ashamed, to call ' a mouldy old city place.' 
 ('The Tower where Lady Jane Grey and Sir 
 Thomas More lay in prison! Oh, Fra,' groaned 
 Mary ; ' and as if her life in London had been spent 
 in Grosvenor or Apsley House or in Park Lane 
 — at the very humblest computation, and not in 
 a suburban school, when a day at the Tower was 
 not only part of the educational routine,but a bright 
 day in the girls' calendar; but that was when she 
 was more unsophisticated and nearer reverence.') 
 Now it was Era's cue to say with a sneer, ' And 
 I suppose you went to Madame Tussaud's also ;' to 
 Avhich the stout-hearted German answered, ' Yes, I
 
 196 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 did go there once, also,' amidst the suppressed 
 smiles of the rest, who knew nothing at all either 
 of the Tower or Madame Tussaud's, but put them 
 down in the same obsolete, despicable category. 
 
 It was a sensible relief one day w^hen some- 
 body came in with the news that Cambridge had 
 Deaten Oxford again in the boat-race, though it 
 led to nothing^ further than a waojer between two 
 of the gentlemen to ride their horses against each 
 other for a bet in the Grosse Garten in the after- 
 noon. 
 
 Wliat Mary feared for the whole party was 
 that they would soon become too selfish and silly 
 even for their own endurance. ' I do wish papa 
 would come in and speak sense, or at least cause 
 us to speak a little less nonsense/ 
 
 But before that desirable consummation the 
 Griifin Von Hersfeld's festivities were crowned by 
 a party, at which the King and Queen were 
 present, and that nearly carried Mary herself off 
 her steady feet. ' Your sisters are as snobbish as 
 a couple of tuft hunters who have never been in 
 the company of a title, native or foreign,' com- 
 plained Mr. Carteret to Mary, when he had 
 suffered with patience a good deal of family 
 expatiation on the illustrious personages who had 
 put the finishing touches to the Grafin's assembly. 
 ' The real gilding which rank gives at home is not 
 always satisfactory, but having seen that, at their
 
 BY THE ELBE. 197 
 
 leisure, I have to object to my daughters beh:g 
 dazzled by foreign pinchbeck.' 
 
 ' But surely a king is somebody,' said Mary, 
 taking guilt to herself, ' even to people of such 
 consequence that they have already enjoyed the 
 distinction of dancing with a duke at a Lord- 
 Lieutenant's ball' Mary alluded to a piece of 
 promotion which had once befollen herself. ' We 
 are not in company with a king every evening, 
 not to say a gallant king, who has led his soldiers 
 to fight, and earned, next to Kaiser Wilhelm, the 
 title of defender of his country.' 
 
 'The humblest member of the land-gewehr 
 earned as much,' asserted Mr. Carteret : ' I am not 
 sure that some of the naturalised Germans — such 
 as young Penryn, who fought faithfully for an 
 adopted country which was not likely to give liim 
 great credit — did not deserve the praise the most 
 of all. I do not know that vou women were all 
 fain to make a hero of hnu when you liad tlie 
 chance.' 
 
 ' But we never h;id the chance,' said Mary, 
 merrily. 'You forget that a man in pursuit of so 
 tremendous a farce as perpetual motion could not 
 stop for our applauding smiles.' Even while she 
 spoke her own words called up before her a vision 
 of a banner ' with a strange device ' before the 
 nobleness of which the glory of kings failed. 
 
 Mr. Carteret could not read her thouglits ; he 
 exclaimed, ' Mary, I don't hke to hear you jest
 
 198 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 on a craze whicli may be the wreck of a capable 
 fellow.' 
 
 Mary turned the conversation a little. ' And I 
 saw on a royal neck the diamond necklace which 
 on ordinary occasions is doubly locked and 
 guarded in the Green Vaults.' 
 
 ' Well, at least that was something solid,' said 
 her father. 
 
 Mary was aware that her father, in his British 
 fiither's exemption from all respect for the foreign 
 titles which he had stigmatised as pinchbeck, was 
 guilty of some illiberality and injustice. She her- 
 self had heard at least one title, at this very 
 Griifin's ball, which had as true a historic ring, and 
 answered to hereditary possessions as extensive 
 and important, as those of any representative of 
 the ruling families of England.
 
 BY THE ELBE. I'Jl) 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 WHOM MARY MEETS SCOUTIXG THE VEEONESES AND 
 STUDYING THE ALBKECHT DUEERS. 
 
 Mart was bound for the Gallery for her shiiple 
 gratification. She had not much to do with 
 art except in a true love for it ; any power 
 of expressing herself by form or colour had not 
 been given as in the case of Lyd, and painters dc 
 not spring fully armed into birth, as aloes have 
 been supposed to bloom, once in a hundred years. 
 Even her close companionship with her father 
 ]iad not made Mary sketch and work at land- 
 scapes, which was not wonderful since, in these 
 later years at the Warren, during the interval 
 when Mary grew up from a child to a woman, the 
 squire had found too much to do to practise an old 
 accomplishment which was after all a mere ac- 
 comi)lishmcnt, more correct and careful than 
 brilhant, and not very inspiring to lookers-on. 
 
 But Mary felt all the more disengaged and 
 impartial to admire, because even at Dresden she 
 only tried to copy a flower and paint a China 
 plate, while she had not put pencil or brush to
 
 200 LY THE ELBE. 
 
 paper at home for any purpose less practical and 
 nearer art than to depict a tumble-down gate — 
 not because it was picturesque, but as a note 
 where and how it needed mending, or to give an 
 idea of a window — and this had been a somewhat 
 grand flight — which she had seen in another part 
 of the country, and that might be a guide to the 
 villao-e buikier who was raisino- the last cottage 
 her father erected on the Warren. 
 
 It was a sunshiny morning in March, cold 
 still, but with the snow clouds fled for the season, 
 and Avith strono; indications of that sudden chang-e 
 which converts winter into summer by a touch — 
 'the touch of fairy hand' on the banks of the Elbe. 
 Already the proprietors of all the liumble little 
 beer gardens — which, as they were near at hand, 
 competed successfully with the Grosse Garten on 
 the outskirts of the town — were lookinix com- 
 placently on their budding cherry and pear trees. 
 The owners Avere directing the repairing of the 
 benches and the fresh hanging of the lamps in an- 
 ticipation of the fast approaching time wdien the 
 never-ceasing concerts would change their quarters 
 from the stifling atmosphere of societies' rooms to 
 the air freer, though still polluted with much 
 tobacco smols;e, under the broad blue vault which 
 stretched from the Elbe to the Ehine, and to many 
 a neighbouring river of which the Fatherland took 
 less cognisance. 
 
 There was a little company of holiday people
 
 BY THE ELBE. 201 
 
 walking just before Mary, bound for a family 
 gathering, or for some pleasure excursion to the 
 Waldschlosschen, or to Pillnitz, or the Moritzburg. 
 The men and women belonged to a higher class 
 than that which has all its festivals on Sunday, 
 yet the women practised the pretty coquettish 
 tradeswomen's custom of using fans instead of 
 parasols, while the sun was still a March sun. A 
 large black or brown fan held before the eyes 
 which just peep over it, or beam from beneath it, 
 is so manifestly an effective addition to a spring 
 toilette, that Mary was not surprised the habit 
 should ascend in the social scale, until the Gritfin 
 von Hersfeld and her set, with Fra and Lyd, 
 adopted it on occasions. 
 
 The first brush of green had touched all the 
 bushes and trees of all the alleys as far as the 
 Zwinger, to which Mary went leisurely, making a 
 detour by the smallest of lakes, on which the 
 tiniest of shallops did duty for sailing boats. On 
 the benches in tlie court, where they were sur- 
 rounded and overshadowed by elaborate alle- 
 gorical figures sculptured on entrances and facades, 
 of Eaphael and Michael Angelo, St. George and 
 Siegfried, the earliest batch of nurses were to be 
 met, seated at their ease, to knit, gossip and lend an 
 eye to the small mummies of swaddled babies, 
 bound to pillows upon their laps. The babies 
 were liardly freer in limbs and lungs when de- 
 posited in perambulators with a minute feather
 
 202 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 bed tucked up to tlie chin, above eacli recumbent 
 infant. In the latter case, as if to add a refine- 
 ment to cruelty, though no doubt with the humane 
 purpose of shielding the child from that air of 
 Heaven, which worthy stove-baked Germans have 
 such an inveterate shrinking from, the hood of 
 the equipage is reversed and the half-smothered 
 freight driven, with what may be called, for the 
 sake of graphicness, its back to the horses. 
 
 However, these Saxon babies — round, blonde, 
 and blue eyed, take kindly, and prosper won- 
 derfully under the strange processes to which 
 they are subjected; and the spectacle they present 
 is anything save depressing. Some of the older 
 and poorer women wore the dark kerchief wound 
 round the head turban fashion, which is so curi- 
 ously unbecoming to the German face, while it 
 positively sets off clear-cut French profiles. 
 Among the younger and well-to-do Avomen — 
 bonnes in good families, there were Altenburg 
 peasants in their ' tracht ' or costume of short 
 full skirts, voluminous aprons almost meeting be- 
 hind, dark bodices, and black, silk coronets with a 
 back piece on which a little flower of coloured 
 silks or beads is embroidered, having black 
 streamers hano;in(T down their backs. The mddchen 
 were not what could be called handsome in 
 a stranger's eyes. But there was something 
 better than beauty in their broad blithe faces as 
 they discussed the old mother's cough — why Jette
 
 BY THE ELBE. 203 
 
 was seeking a place — or that Franz or Karl was 
 coming to the town in the next detachment of 
 workinsf soldiers, who in their labourers' dress, with 
 only military stripes on the arms, were constantly 
 to be seen as tliey marched to and from the scene 
 of their operations. 
 
 Whether it were the influence of the spring 
 making itself felt, or her own humour for the 
 moment affecting her mind, it seemed to Marj^ 
 that she encountered none save cheerfid images 
 this morning, or else there was some power abroad 
 which cast a veil of resignation and a halo of hope 
 about everything that was sad. For Mary did pass 
 a funeral, but it was a Lutheran and not a Catho- 
 lic funeral, and that distinction, all who have dwelt 
 for even a short time in Germany can appreciate. 
 From the silver instead of the gold of the open 
 car, and the profuse flower-wreaths hiding the 
 coffin, to the serene, weU nigh glad inscriptions on 
 the vehicle itself, of quiet rest and happy home- 
 going, every item pointed to the original abohtion 
 of purgatory from the Lutheran Creed, and to 
 what followed, at the time, of triumphant faitli 
 in the complete work of God's Son and entire 
 trust in His pardoning merc3^ Before the little 
 procession, the nurse who had done the last mourn- 
 ful services for the deceased walked, without 
 wearing the mourniii<]!; which was reserved for the 
 bereaved family, and conversed sedately, on her 
 own business, with the chief undertaker's man mar-
 
 204 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 shalling the procession, and bearing as his insignia 
 a green bough, which miglit stand for a pahn 
 branch. 
 
 Mary not only crossed the path of a funeral, 
 she overtook a mild-faced deaconess in her 
 black gown and blue apron and having her black 
 hood bound with purple over her white cap. But 
 the association with pain and sickness that the 
 quaint figm^e conveyed was so blent with the sense 
 of balm and relief which she and her sisters of the 
 Mother-house, her Catholic sisters of the Order of 
 Mercy and her lay sisters of the Order of Albert, 
 brought to all suffering withiii their reach, in 
 Dresden, tliat Mary felt no more depressed in her 
 cheerfulness by contact with the deaconess, than she 
 would have been depressed by contact with an angel. 
 
 It might be that the funeral and the deaconess 
 sobered Mary's gaiety a little, as they lent it a 
 quality of tenderness which it would otherwise 
 have lacked ; but she would not, with the full 
 knowleclo-e that death and tribulation were in the 
 world, have desired to miss the encounters for any 
 sliadow of though tfulness they cost her. 
 
 Mary had been to the Gallery many times — 
 certainly weekly, if not daily — since the family had 
 settled in Dresden. 
 
 It seemed an £\Qe ao;o since she had first 
 climbed those broad stairs, relinquished her um- 
 brella to the woman in charge, and entered ex- 
 cited, raverential, yet unable to rest till she had
 
 BY THE ELBE. 205 
 
 passed the less treasures by, and penetrated to the 
 chamber of chambers, where hung one of the 
 pictmres of the world, fitly kept alone in its per- 
 fect majesty and beauty — Eaphael's Madonna di 
 San Sisto. There was the meek and modest 
 virgin, the simple peasant girl standing with her 
 bare brown feet on the white clouds, holdinof 
 cradled in her arms the Child, with its child-like- 
 ness and its divine wisdom. The grand adorincr 
 old saint in his robe of fine yellow and white, lined 
 with cherry colour, knelt on one side ; on the other 
 knelt beautiful St. Barbara in a cool hlac and green 
 drapery. Mary liked this figure the least in the 
 picture, and it seemed to her, if she might dare 
 to express the thought, almost simpering in ex- 
 pression and affected in attitude. But the two 
 boy angels below, with their brown and green 
 bird-like wings, and their chubby faces full of awe 
 and delight as they gazed into the unseen, were 
 simply perfect ; while the faint circle of angels' 
 heads, in the blue of the sky, which formed a semi- 
 circle round the group, answered to a vague require- 
 ment and expectation in the minds of the gazers. 
 Mary had looked again and again, but never 
 looked her fill at this picture. Then she had 
 broken up the rest of the Gallery into fragments 
 and seen them, in turn, with some comfort as well 
 as much pleasure. She had a respectful and 
 very happy familiarity with many of the chief 
 possessions, and entered in a degi'ce into the speech
 
 206 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 of each of tliem, with a widtli of perception and 
 enjoyment which she had inherited from her 
 father. 
 
 She could walk without hesitation to one after 
 another of her favourites, and dwell admiringly 
 and intelligently on their merits, whether they 
 were those of Murillo's artless ' Madonna ' with 
 the dark eyes lit up, or his ' Saint Eodiguez ' 
 with the mortal wound, holding the palm and re- 
 ceiving the crown of martyrdom, or an old 
 w^oman planting a pink in a flower pot, by Mieris, 
 or an old poulterer offering a young woman a 
 cock for sale, bv Metsu. 
 
 There was one thinoj which Marv had not been 
 able to stand, and that was to visit the Gallery in 
 company with her mother and sisters. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret, without malice prepense, far less 
 with the design of insulting her countrymen, calmly 
 compared the pictures to those of the Academy. 
 
 Era besought Mary not to ' gush,' and decoyed 
 Lyd, whose sense of form and colour ought to have 
 been an interpreter to her, to rush from room to 
 room, and peck at this picture and at that. The 
 girls devoted their principal attention to the con- 
 templation of the company — not the artists who 
 were at work, they were the modern schools of the 
 old masters, and a legitimate and interesting study 
 in themselves — but the company par excellence, the 
 sheerly idle, and for the most part vacant frequenters 
 of the place, who w^ere there because it was the thing
 
 BY THE ELBE. 207 
 
 to do at Dresden, just as they might have gone to a 
 bull fight at Seville, and perhaps with rather more 
 satisfaction. To complete their offences, Fra and 
 Lyd, after railing in good set terms at the intoler- 
 able behaviour of some ladies who let their private 
 conversation be heard all over one of the great 
 rooms, would go far to outdo them in brincrinix 
 their petty personal discussions into competition 
 with the silent speech of the immortals. 
 
 But to-day Mary was guilty of her sisters' 
 roaming propensities in public places, only it was 
 roaming with a difference. She had a fanciful 
 desire to take in the whole at once, and compare 
 and contrast the pictures thus matched. So after 
 standing for a few moments before Ribera's ' Mary 
 in Egypt ' kneeling with her rippled golden hair 
 descending to her feet, by her own open grave, 
 Mary Carteret walked on rapidly to Velasquez's 
 portraits. She paused opposite that of a pale- 
 faced man with fair hair grown grey — before she 
 went from it to Eembrandt's portrait, roystering 
 and rollicking with his wife on his knee, and his 
 jrlass in his hand. She advanced at the next stncce 
 to his ' Manoah and Wife,' rich and beautiful, and 
 his quaint ' Marriage of Samson.' 
 
 She changed to Eubens, and studied briefly 
 the painter's powerfully painted boy sons and tlie 
 hkenesses of himself and his wife as robust and 
 buxom cooks, among their fruit, vegetables, and
 
 208 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 game. She passed to his ' St. Jerome,' with his 
 sleeping Hon — a very king of beasts in skimber. 
 
 She tried Van Dyck's so-called children of 
 Charles I., pretty and prim as cliildren, and his 
 ' Charles and Henrietta Maria.' 
 
 She took a great leap to Tintoret's mysterious 
 ' Fall of the Eebel Angels,' and Veronese's splendid 
 ' Marriage at Cana.' 
 
 She rested herself on Titian's superb, stately 
 ' Girl with a Fan,' and ' Girl with a Vase.' 
 
 She was able to bask for an instant in the in- 
 effably pure, delicate, dazzling fairness which shone 
 from ' Virgin and Child ' in Correggio's ' La Notte.' 
 The light refined while it withdrew the mind from 
 the finical elegance that was too apt to attend on 
 Correggio's ' Virgins,' and it had been so entranc- 
 ing to the multitude in all generations, that they 
 had exalted the picture above the works of 
 Piaphael and Michael Angelo. 
 
 She spared notice for that Virgin of Sassofer- 
 rato's regarding the sleeping Child. It was being 
 fitly and fairly copied by a girl artist. The original 
 was very sweet, but it was still more open to the 
 reproach of affectation and mannerism. 
 
 Then, ere Mary turned into the room which 
 w^as consecrated to Holbein's ' Meier Madonna,' 
 before that unlucky discovery whicli proved it to 
 be merely a replica of the picture at Darmstadt, 
 she felt that she had reached the end of her tether. 
 She must give up, as utterly futile, the idea of
 
 BY THE ELBE. 209 
 
 taking in, by a succession of quick earnest glances, 
 the grand many-sided whole of what man can do 
 in art. She must leave untouched gem upon gem, 
 with II Francia's ' Virgin and Child holding a 
 Bird,' and the Giorgione where Jacob encountered 
 Eachel, on which it had always seemed to Mary 
 that the dew of a fresher morning than ours, rested. 
 As for the rooms full of smaller pictures, she 
 could only recall the ' Tribute Money,' the ' Mag- 
 dalene Eeading,' and Palma's ' Three Daughters ' 
 holding the prominent places. Even with regard 
 to them she felt abashed at the folly of her under- 
 taking. It would have required powders as rare 
 as those of the painters, to compass, ever so slightly, 
 these wonderful pictures and their beauties, m one 
 morning. She must relinquish whole suites of 
 remaining rooms very welcome to her when she 
 sought them singly, and which were full of Wou- 
 vermann's gallant groups at fords and inn doors, 
 of Paiysdael's coolness, Berghem's mellowness and 
 Claude's sunshine. She could not so much as stop 
 to think of the homely solemnity of her bright- 
 tinted Bassani, in which the denizens of poultry 
 and farmyards were always naively conspicuous in 
 the most sacred scenes. She had to omit entirely 
 her two Teniers, sometimes absolutely pathetic in 
 the very plainness of the father's and the son's 
 speaking. The gorgeous game, flower and fruit 
 of her Weenixes and Mignons were left nowhere. 
 She was reduced to contenting herself with tar- 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ryiiio' for the rest of her stay in the Meier 
 ' Madonna ' room, where stout Hans' most notable 
 work was in the good company of John Van 
 Evck's and Mabuse's ' Madonnas,' and in the still 
 better company of two Albrecht Durers. Of the 
 last, the one from the great ' Passion ' was crowded 
 Avitli small figures, having a jewel-like radiance, 
 and something hke the flash of steel upon them, 
 and tlie other, a solitary ' Christ on the Cross,' 
 liad the figure raised against a deep blue sky, 
 while the whole conception was instinct with 
 noble ano;uish and awful loneliness. 
 
 The room had a single occupant — a man stand- 
 ino; motionless before the last Albrecht Dlirer. He 
 was disturbed and looked round on Mary's en- 
 trance. To her surprise, she recognised young 
 Penryn, the heir of her father's reluctant gratitude, 
 the desperate seeker who desired to solve the 
 insoluble problem of perpetual motion, a man 
 whom the world would regard as a good deal 
 madder and more unjustifiable in his madness — 
 though Mary could not endorse the last conclusion 
 — than a certain mad Graf who had lately risen 
 above her horizon, and of whom she was destined 
 to hear, till her ears rang with the very monotony 
 of the measure. 
 
 Mr. Penrj'U showed a puzzled recollection of 
 Mary's face as one he had seen before, by covertly 
 looking at her more than once, before he boAved 
 slightly, but with an assured air, indicating that
 
 BY THE ELBE. 211 
 
 he had hit the mark of her identity. At the same 
 time he moved aside to leave her free to make 
 her examination of the Albrecht Dlirers. 
 
 He seemed inclined to make the slio-ht bow 
 suffice for his acknowledgment of their acquain- 
 tance. Mary thoroughly roused, conscious of 
 the interest which her father would take in the 
 meeting, did not well know how she was to j^ut 
 in a claim to a more definite renewal of inter- 
 course. She was hesitating whether she should 
 not walk up to Taff Penryn and take tlie initiative 
 in addressing him, upon the plea — he was the 
 first person whom she had met, since she had come 
 abroad, that she had seen before at the Warren, 
 and who knew something, however little, of her 
 English home. This would only have been half 
 the truth ; for, although it was a fact that Mary's 
 heart would have warmed at an encounter Avith 
 an old Turfshire neis^hbour even in the tenth or 
 twentieth degree, in this kingdom of vine slopes 
 and pine forests, of comparatively modern bat- 
 tlefields, of endless quartets and fugues, and of 
 one glorious picture gallery, it was by no means 
 the English yearning which caused her heart 
 to beat hio;h at the renewed si<i;ht of the flaxen 
 hair and brown fiice. It was the excitement 
 of meeting again one of the wonders of the world 
 — a modern alchemist of mysterious potency, 
 attired in a modern coat, breeches, and hat, instead 
 of an ancient furred gown and cap — and who 
 
 p 2
 
 212 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 was yet as ready as his hoary brethren of the 
 iniddle ages to cast the world behind him and 
 count it well lost, for the fascination of grasping at 
 a shadow whose substance liad eluded the greedy 
 clutch of the most devoted and erudite aspirant 
 in every generation up to tlie present moment. 
 
 Before Mary could make up her mind, Taif 
 Penryn took tlie matter into his own hands. It 
 had occurred to him, simultaneously with the idea 
 that it was just possible a little bow was too poor 
 an acknowledgment for favours received, that he 
 could confer a favour in his turn. The young 
 lady, one of Mr. Carteret of the Warren's daugh- 
 ters, might be at a loss in a foreign gallery, and be 
 the better for counsel and information. 
 
 He turned back and came up to Mary as frankly 
 and simply as he had just greeted her formally, 
 ' Are you living in Dresden, Miss Carteret ? Have 
 you been long here ? You are without a cata- 
 logue. Do you knoAV the pictures ? Can I be 
 of use to you ? ' 
 
 The foreign intonation which Mary had for- 
 merly remarked in his Enghsh seemed to have 
 dropped from it, and it came to her with a plea- 
 sant native accent, after even the accomplished 
 Griifin von Hersfeld's very allowable but some- 
 what trying blunders in speaking of being ' pre- 
 parated ' to receive her dear friends, or in enquiring 
 whether Mary had ever been presented to the 
 ' Lord Major ' of London.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 213 
 
 All tlie same Taff Penryn was a German on 
 German OTOund, a man who had all the confi- 
 dence and the insphiting ease of being at home in 
 the subject and the scene. Mary answered his 
 questions without seeking to be concise. AH the 
 family, including her fatlier and motlier, w^ere 
 there, and had been there for tlie last six months : 
 they had become householders — if an etage 
 could be called a house — in Dresden. She did 
 not have a catalogue because she had the better 
 part of hers off by heart. She could not pre- 
 sume to say to one who had spent his life in 
 Germany, and who, in stud3dng at Leipsic — had 
 doubtless often come to Dresden, tliat slie knew 
 the pictures ; though she could say they had been 
 an occupation and delight to her during her stay. 
 He would see that she did not like to trespass on 
 liis kindness and accept his services under false 
 pretences of utter ignorance or lielplessness, but 
 she would be greatly indebted for any information 
 he chose to give her. 
 
 In spite of the encouragement deliberately 
 alTurded — for Mary was anxious to make lierself 
 agreeable to Taff Penryn — he was not quick to 
 offer his services when lie understood that they 
 were not needed. 
 
 He asked for Mr. Carteret instead, and said 
 something civil of calling for him, only his — Taff 
 Penryn's — time, as a rule, was not his own and was 
 much occupied.
 
 214 EY THE ELBE. 
 
 Sometliincc in the manner and not in the words 
 left Mary with an impression that TafF Penryn 
 and her Mlier had parted awkwardlj^ 
 
 Mr. Carteret, taken by surprise, and in tlie 
 height of consternation, had probably expressed to 
 the young man in whom he was concerned, without 
 any (ilear call to control him, as bluntly as he had 
 done in his own family afterwards, his sense of 
 the unprofitableness, the utter folly and therefore 
 the positive culpability, of the student's most che- 
 rished pursuits. And no doubt TafF Penryn, who 
 was quite as candid and resolute in his own way, 
 had stuck to his point and denied the right of 
 interference, however well meant, in his career. 
 
 It looked for a moment as if the interview 
 must end there, but an opportune observation 
 which Mary ventured upon the Albrecht Diirers 
 caused TafT Penryn to say with some animation 
 and interest — 
 
 ' Do you admire Albrecht Dllrer ? I thought 
 fjirls did not care for liim. I thouo-]it thev would 
 prefer such great showy pieces as those of the 
 man milliner Veronese, out there,' indicating with 
 an impatient jerk of his elbow the door leadmg 
 to the Italian room. 
 
 It felt refreshing to Mary to be referred to as 
 a girl, in this brotherly, off-hand, slightly disparag- 
 ing, yet wholly kindly fashion, by the young phi- 
 losopher, in the same manner that he would 
 address his comrades' sisters, and the old pro-
 
 BY THE ELBli, 213 
 
 fessor's daughters with whom he had hved all 
 
 his life. 
 
 But she experienced a shade of mortifica- 
 tion at his inference. 'I dare say many girls 
 care for Albrecht Diirer,' she said sniihng, ' at 
 least I hope they do, else it is the worse for 
 the girls ; and as for Veronese,' added Mary, 
 brave in her little pique, ' I think he too is very 
 worthy of admiration as a grand painter with his 
 tools, if he did not think deeply or feel acutely. 
 Yet they say he was tender-hearted and devout- 
 minded, for all the lavish pride of life in his 
 details.' 
 
 He answered the first part of her sentence : 
 ' I see you are on Euskin's track ; ' and then he 
 admitted fairly, ' Very likely it is all right, but I 
 don't go in for pictures or for musical performances 
 unless for the soul that is in them — I mean tlie 
 soul of the desig-n — the trutli to be told and 
 the lesson to be taught. I am too ignorant and 
 obtuse also, I suppose, in this line, to care for the 
 technicalities and to have pleasure in feats of 
 execution. I know I like these well enough in 
 my own shop, that is in mechanics and chemistry ; 
 I can huui and pur like a cat over inventions and 
 experiments which liave come to nothing, simply 
 because of the ingenuity and dexterity displayed in 
 them. I don't think I half deprecate the waste of 
 skill and of ten or twenty years of a man's life given 
 to those timepieces stored in tlie Green Vaults,
 
 216 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 wliich were warranted to lead out processions 
 and marshal historic scenes, as well as do their 
 ordinary duty of sliowing the hour. The break- 
 age of one small wheel or chain in the machinery 
 was their permanent destruction, since no man 
 could or would trace out the intricate processes on 
 which they worked — always saving their inventor, 
 who might be in his grave, worn out by hard 
 mechanical study long years before the disaster.' 
 
 ' Then you have sympathy with the Chinese ? ' 
 said Mary. 
 
 ' I should say that I have some sympathy with 
 the Chinese, who invented the art of printing and 
 the manufocture of glass,' he granted quickly, 
 pulling his blonde moustache ; ' but you are 
 referring to their toys, and I was alluding to a 
 weakness on my part. Do you miss anything in 
 Eaphae^'s pictures ? ' 
 
 'In Eaphael, in the "SanSisto"?' said Mary, 
 breathlessl)''. 
 
 ' Yes, most of all in the " San Sisto." It is 
 hypercriticism, of course ; but does it not strike 
 you that he has attained to the very height of his 
 standard, so that, noble as that standard was, there 
 must have been something limited in it, which 
 rendered it capable of his attainment.' 
 
 'And yet you believe that the discovery of 
 perpetual motion is within man's reach.' Mary 
 did not speak out this reflection, she only thought 
 it and of the glaring inconsistency, while she
 
 BY THE ELBE, J^it 
 
 looked at the daring critic witli bright enquiring 
 eyes. 
 
 'There is something in such perfection as 
 Eaphael's which sometimes frets me with a sense 
 of a lower aim, as w^ell as of a cold material 
 superiority. My senses are ravished with the per- 
 fection but my spirit is not satisfied,' he persisted. 
 ' Now, in some of the older masters and in the 
 Niiremburgher the struggle between inspiration 
 and obstacles is so passionate and pathetic that it 
 thrills a man only to contemplate it. It is as if the 
 sold of the painter was bigger than his canvas, 
 than his paints, than his fingers, than the whole 
 outer world ; and tlie longer one looks at the pic- 
 ture, what of soul has reallv entered into the work, 
 iDreaks through more and more, as if it would never 
 have done with breaking through, and appeals to 
 a fellow soul and to its cravings. Do you know 
 what this says to me ? ' he broke off, pointing to 
 Albrecht Diirer's realisation of Calvary. 
 
 ' No,' replied Mary in a single word. 
 
 ' It says, in the sublimity of that desertion and 
 sorrow there was a grain iu common with the 
 human smallness of abandonment and isolation 
 experienced by those inventors and discoverers 
 who strove, suffered, and agonised in their own 
 poor way to benefit a w^orld which stigmatised its 
 best workers as fools and fanatics.' 
 
 Mary was silent ; such words were strange to 
 her, accustomed to reticence on all subjects wdiich
 
 218 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 moved men deeply, above all on religious subjects, 
 in young men especially ; though she also knew 
 that the time had gone by when young English- 
 men were tempted to express hostility to reli- 
 gion. On the contrary, it had become the fashion 
 to patronise and pat it on the back as a very good 
 thing in its way, while they dropped it, in the very 
 act of patting it, as no concern of theirs, and a 
 little beneath their attention. 
 
 She could not tell whether this young man 
 were specially religious ; she could only guess that 
 he felt strongly on this as on other subjects, and 
 that where he felt strongly he had no shame of 
 speaking openly — nay, he had picked up a habit in 
 a retired primitive life of giving impulsive utter- 
 ance to his thoughts. He did not now show any 
 consciousness of having said too much, or for that 
 matter consciousness of any kind. 
 
 The effect upon Mary, after her experience in 
 listening to the unvaried, hackneyed chit-chat — bald 
 in its very smartness, of the Grafin von Hersfeld's 
 set, was as if the young woman had been suddenly 
 transplanted from a garden dwindling into barren- 
 ness, by reason of want of air and no change of 
 the exhausted soil, to a free hill-side open to every 
 wanderino: wind of earth or heaven, and where 
 each stray breeze was welcome for its very fresh- 
 ness. 
 
 But Mary and Taff Penryn liad so far ex- 
 hausted their discussion — it was too one-sided for
 
 BY THE ELBE. 219 
 
 argument — and he was prepared, as a tribute to a 
 certain amount of friendliness which had sprung 
 up between them, on the moment, to escort her on 
 her return through the rooms and out into the 
 grounds. There she was edified and amused by 
 the pleasure with which her companion stopped 
 to regard the fountains playing for the first time 
 that season, to buy a bunch of violets from the girl 
 selling them near the door-step, and to exchange 
 a sonorous ' Guten Tag ' with the old woman who 
 greeted him as a former purchaser of her photo- 
 graphs. 
 
 Taff Penryn went with Mary past the Queen 
 Dowager's palace and the wall beginning to be 
 covered with frescoes in greys and browns of the 
 whole race of Saxon princes. He detained her to 
 point out with German indefatigableness the 
 general scope of each separate example of the 
 series, and he displayed, in spite of his assertion 
 of indifference to technicalities in art, considerable 
 satisfaction with the correctness of historical 
 costume in the illustrations. His last evidence of 
 goodwill to Mary was in his calling her attention in 
 high glee to a plebeian, bedraggled, unceremonious 
 mother pigeon Avhich, after dipping, sidling and 
 bending obsequiously to those hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water in the ISTeumarkt, who were 
 accustomed to throw it and its brood small doles 
 of crumbs, had ended by perching phlegmatically 
 on the symbol of the anointed head of Friedrich 
 August in the statue before the Hotel do Saxe.
 
 220 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE BAROXESS GISELA AND HER COUSIN THE MAD 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Very soon Fra and Lyd's devotion to the cliarms 
 of foreign society, which consisted, so far as they 
 were concerned, in the favour with which the two 
 girls were received, became largely concentrated 
 on one young lady. She was a visitor, not of the 
 Gnifin's but of a quiet and sober elderly lady, a 
 Madame March, who was not even noble — at least 
 who had done tlie best she could to forfeit the 
 jiobility to which she was born by marrying in 
 her day a wealthy Berlin banker of merely burgher 
 origin. 
 
 Madame March, with the considerable income 
 which as a childless widow she had inherited from 
 her former husband, was a convenient friend of 
 the Griifin, and still more so of Madame's own 
 niece, the Baroness Gisela, tlie motherless, only 
 daughter of Baron Eudener, one of the poorest 
 of honest thrifty old country noblemen, whom 
 rich and sumptuous plebeianism could afford to 
 deride.
 
 BY THE ELBE. *221 
 
 Madame Marck, in her partial descent to 
 trading ranks, had so sensitive an appreciation of 
 what she had left behind — while she had forgotten 
 the substantial gain accruing to her by the ex- 
 change, that she was, in spite of her parsimonious 
 disposition, quite willing to pay in a sort for the 
 Grafin's faithful friendship. She contributed fully 
 to all the incidental expenses which the members 
 of the best society do not refuse to share in 
 country excursions and friendly festivities, by 
 volunteering; to furnish the refreshments, to bestow 
 the trhik geld on the attendants, to take upon lier 
 the debt to choral singers, and to lavish upon the 
 Griifin the flowers the rearing of which was 
 Madame Marck's special attainment and re- 
 creation. 
 
 Being in such a subdued frame of mind on her 
 own account, Madame Marck put an exaggerated 
 value on the social importance of her brother's 
 daughter. She considered it a privilege and not 
 a burden to be of use to her, by receiving her with 
 all honour as well as kindness when the Baroness 
 Gisela came in from her father's half-ruinous 
 schloss in a remote district of the Thuringer Wald, 
 to profit as she best might by the progress in civi- 
 hsation and the urbanities of a town, and to have 
 her share in the stir, which was life after the 
 winter stillness that the Griifin von Hersfeld and 
 even Madame Marck called death, of the castle 
 buried in the wilderness of woods.
 
 222 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 The Baroness Gisela did not trespass on 
 lier aunt's prepossession in her favour. Mary had 
 an agreeable surprise in this hist object of Fra 
 and Lyd's furor. The young Baroness was a 
 quiet, shy, proud girL Her father's poverty, her 
 elder and favourite brother's death in the late wars, 
 were crosses which she could not readily forget. 
 In addition, the Baroness Gisela suffered from 
 a supreme humiliation to a young woman. She 
 might have been pretty, or at least very pleasing, 
 with her slight pliant figure, her masses of dark 
 brown hair, not worn in the luxuriant plaits of 
 lier peasant countrywomen, but suffered to hang 
 down about her face and neck in long loose curls, 
 her delicate youthful colour, though her nose was 
 broader than Mary's and more tip-tilted than Lyd's 
 — but for one fatal defect. The Baroness Gisela 
 had been born with so bad a squint in both her large 
 brown eyes, which had not been operated on by 
 science, that it was an actual distress — to those who 
 w^ere not so familiar with the defect as to lose sisfht 
 of it — to meet the gaze which was thus distorted. 
 
 Taking everything into consideration, her 
 father's age and impecuniosity and the restrictions 
 and deprivations Avhich that condition alone im- 
 plied, her darling brother Hugo's premature and 
 violent death, though it w^as a glorious death, her 
 own personal disfigurement, it was difficult for the 
 Baroness to realise such a life of light-hearted 
 freedom from care, indulgence from friends, and
 
 BY THE ELBE. 223 
 
 flattering petting from society as that enjoyed by 
 her young Enghsh acquaintances, the Carterets. 
 
 The girls lived in different worlds, and Gisela 
 could only regard that of Era and Lyd Carteret 
 "with wistful fascinated wonder, in which there 
 was no sting of envy ; for Gisela's was not a 
 rebelhous or exacting, rather a submissive and 
 contented nature, moreover she possessed her 
 compensations. 
 
 At first it was a mystery to Mary what could 
 be the attraction to her younger sisters in the 
 quiet old-fashioned little Baroness, of whom the 
 magnate the Griifin von Hersfeld spoke only with 
 condescending pity. ' Poor little Gisela, for whom 
 we must do the best in our power, though I 
 cannot hope that even so middhng a fate as that 
 of her doting tante Julie is in store for her. 
 Baron Eudener has no influence, any more than a 
 portion, to bestow on his daughter's husband. 
 His ancestors were not provident enough to 
 become members of a stift. What commoner, be 
 he simple wood merchant, head forester, physician, 
 or pastor, the only representatives of the middle 
 class to be found in the forest, will be likely to 
 look over these unfortunate eyes, even if Gisela's 
 father and brother were willing to consent to the 
 degradation ? No ; either Madame Marck must 
 adopt her — to the cutting out of her other nieces 
 and nephews — or the smallest post at one of the 
 small courts, with some little OTant from a
 
 224 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 foundation for poor noble young ladies, which will 
 keep the child from starving, is all that can be 
 expected for Gisela.' 
 
 Mary cogitated whether the secret of the 
 extravagant fancy which Fra and Lyd displayed 
 for the Baroness Gisela, lay in propinquity, since 
 Madame Marck and her modest household were 
 established on a neighbouring etage in the Bllr- 
 guwiese. But such propinquity went for little in a 
 town so small as Dresden, and with girls of such 
 energetic and independent habits as Fra and Lyd 
 Carteret displayed. Then could it be that handle 
 to Gisela's old German name — even as Mr. Carteret 
 had accused his daughters of being unduly influ- 
 enced by trappings of rank which were ren- 
 dered paltry by their shabbiness P But the girls 
 knew other Griifinnen and Baronninnen, old, 
 middle-aged, and young, some of them in far better 
 circumstances than those in which Gisela von 
 Eudener was placed. Yet on none did Fra and 
 Lyd set their hearts, as they set them on the 
 young lady — insignificant, somewhat neglected 
 (in spite of Madame March's zealous efforts), and 
 whose supply of pocket-money was so absurdly 
 scanty that it provoked to laughter behind her 
 back the very girls who were sedulously cultivating 
 her acquaintance above board, and whose own 
 father was living abroad to retrench his expenses. 
 
 Mary had begun to question whether Fra and 
 Lyd had not done themselves greater injustice by
 
 BY THE ELBE. 225 
 
 their ostentatious professions of worldliness than 
 she had ventured to suspect, when all at once a 
 lio;ht of illumination flashed on her. Baroness 
 Gisela, if she was poor as a church mouse in every- 
 thing else, was rich in one possession — she owned 
 a tie of blood, not very near, but still sufficient to 
 receive capricious acknowledgment from its object 
 — to the individual who was then creating the 
 liveliest sensation in certain circles in Dresden. 
 
 Baroness Gisela had a cousin a Graf, as well as 
 a father and a surviving brother Barons. But there 
 was this great distinction between the relations, 
 that while Baron Eudener and his son were fallen 
 down in the world, obscure for their rank, poor 
 and plodding country noblemen, the young Graf 
 von Felsberg, who had already entered on his 
 kingdom, owned a proud national name which his 
 ancestors had once and again carried to the front 
 in history, and had succeeded to immense tracts of 
 country and great wealth for a German nobleman. 
 Withal he bore such distinction in his own proper 
 person as to cast into the shade even these in- 
 herited gains, since he was popularly designated, 
 both by patricians and plebeians, by the alluring 
 style — not simply of the Graf von Felsberg, but 
 of ' The Mad Graf.' 
 
 Mary had seen him first at the party at tlie 
 Grafin Von Hersfeld's which included the King 
 and Queen among its guests. Then there had 
 been an interesting difficulty whether the Mad 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Graf could be brought into the royal circle, not be- 
 cause of any defect in his coat of arms or revenues, 
 or any suspicion of present outrage on his part — 
 in keeping with his classification, but because he 
 had just emerged from a year's imprisonment in- 
 flicted on him as a punishment for his last duel. 
 
 The Graf's face showed those traces of a bar- 
 barous custom which Fra had missed in Taflf 
 Penryn's. The Graf had not gone through his 
 university career without half-a-dozen of such 
 warlike encounters as those which had left a long 
 livid scar down his cheek, and another scar across 
 his right hand. * 
 
 ' What a brutal wretch ! ' Mary had been 
 tempted to exclaim. 
 
 ' Oh no, my dear young lady,' an enthusiastic 
 bystander had explained ; ' a little ungovernable 
 in his temper — a fault that prevented him from 
 serving wth the honour which he was sure to 
 have won in the late glorious war ; he could not 
 brook disciphne, brandished his sword in a superior 
 officer's face, and had to retire niimediately by 
 favour — a fault for which he had to eat the onion — 
 an expression of your divine countryman, 
 Shakespeare's, is it not ? He is very generous ; 
 not a Kellner at the hotel where the Graf is staying 
 would not cheerfully have his dishes thrown at 
 his head every day, for the douceur which would 
 be certain to follow. The Graf presented an in- 
 triguing Eussian Princess, who has been staying in
 
 BY THE ELBE. 227 
 
 the same hotel, with an elegant phaeton and pair 
 of beautiful poneys, just to make up to her, for the 
 disappointment of his not complying with her 
 scheme of marrying him. You may see liim in his 
 sables driving it for her sometimes, when he is not 
 guiding his own four-in-hand, or when he is not 
 on foot in the shabbiest joppe to be met with on 
 the pavement, bound for the stables, where he will 
 groom his horses mth his own hands. And don't 
 you think his scars become him — set off the — 
 what shall I call it — fiery nobility of his air ? ' 
 
 Mary looked again. ' They are not out of 
 keeping,' she admitted, ' with the tout ensemble of a 
 man who must be a descendant of the Eobber 
 Knights, and who appears to be half desperado, half 
 Turk. I wish the Eussian Princess well through her 
 conquest ; at least, she had the chance in her favour 
 of being accustomed to the taming of Tartars.' 
 
 'But there was no conquest in the matter,' 
 insisted the speaker, ' unless on the Graf's side. 
 If you think that he presented the phaeton and 
 poneys out of subjection or fear, you entirely 
 mistake the man. Why, I have seen him tln^ow a 
 whole thaler into the dirt to be picked up by a 
 poor drudge of a woman, thankful to fill the post 
 of a scavenger, or scatter coin broadcast for 
 honigkuchen and little windmills, which he left to 
 the children gaping round the poorest stalls in tlie 
 Alt Markt at Christmas. Yet I have heard the 
 same man threaten to horsewhip a head ostler or 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 a farrier, or the clerk who sold the tickets for the 
 theatre or the railway, if he fancied he was over- 
 charged by a single groschen.' 
 
 ' I am glad to hear it,' said Mary. ' But still 
 it is arbitrary, one-sided generosity, with justice 
 as arbitrary and tolerably rough. I cannot help 
 being confirmed in my idea that there is an affinity 
 between the Graf von Felsberg and the Eussian 
 Princess, whose lace is soiled, while her coach- 
 man is resplendent in purple and gold, and 
 which ought to bring the pair together.' Mary's 
 exponent of the Graf's shining qualities had to 
 give her up as incorrigible. 
 
 Mary's second look at the Graf had shown 
 her a tall, lean young man with a deep broad 
 chest, but with the tendency to high shoulders, 
 whether or not it might be the effect of the shape 
 of his dress coat, which Fra had affected to discover 
 in TafF Penryn. Nature had constituted him 
 beardless and whiskerless, in itself a conspicuous 
 exception among his hirsute associates. 
 
 He had done the best he could to remedy the 
 deficiency by wearing ]iis fair hair — not so fair 
 as Taff Penryn's, but still yellow hair— not merely 
 long, but tossed about and thrown back in what 
 was not so much a fine frenzy, or a Schiller fashion, 
 as a precaution against what was effeminate in his 
 smooth brick-red cheeks and aquiline features. 
 But there was a still better remedy for any woman- 
 liness of aspect than the studied disorder of his
 
 BY THE ELBE. 229 
 
 hair, or even tlie scars with which he had contrived 
 to invest himself, there was a hawkish wildness in 
 his bright blue eyes, which was not an attribute 
 of a woman's face. 
 
 His evening dress was simple, and unlike his 
 bedecked neighbours, without the riband, cross, 
 or star of an order. It was not without traces 
 of eccentricity otherwise. He wore magnificent 
 diamond studs and solitaires, but he had neither 
 wedding, betrothal, signet, nor any other ring on 
 his sinewy embrowned hands ; and the little silver 
 watch which he drew by a hair guard from jiis 
 breast pocket was what might have been a cheap 
 gift to a schoolboy. 
 
 The Grafs face and figure were conspicuous 
 enough to be easily recognised, even though his 
 fame had not been sounding in every moutli, so 
 that Mary noticed him frequently afterwards. 
 He was at the theatre in the box next to the 
 stage, applauding in his loud voice, and occasion- 
 ally throwing flowers, with which he would come 
 well supplied. People said there were valuable 
 jewels in the hearts of some of these bouquets, 
 but this Mary could not vouch for. He was 
 reining up his four fine horses with a flourish at 
 the door of his hotel. He was sitting in a clumsy 
 chair, drinking Bavarian beer, at the window of the 
 most ordinary beershop. Generally he was alone ; 
 the man's humour seemed unsocial. 
 
 Mary would only have given him a passing
 
 230 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 thought, had not her attention been specially called 
 to him by the sensation which she found the 
 Graf was creating in the world around her. She 
 was made to see that there is a kind of notoriety 
 which is not only infinitely delightful to its object, 
 but has a pungent fascination for commonplace 
 and thoughtless people. It is a spurious fame, 
 which somehow dazzles and captivates much more 
 than real fame impresses the ordinary bystander. 
 It may be that it proceeds from a distorted reflec- 
 tion of really great and rare qualities, manly indiffer- 
 ence to the world's opinions, superiority to mere 
 conventionalities, originality and independence. 
 Perhaps the turned aside, twisted shadow looms out 
 more imposingly — as it is certainly far more fan- 
 tastic — than any straight simple reality, otherwise 
 it is odd that the effect, which is far from legitimate, 
 should have ten times the influence of the sub- 
 stance. 
 
 Mary, who was neither commonplace nor 
 thoughtless, could not account for the excitement 
 of which the Mad Graf was the author. It 
 encompassed him like a constantly rising mag- 
 nifying mist. She asked herself in vain what it 
 was all about, and what it came to. Felsberg 
 was of high and notable lineage, and his pos- 
 sessions were extensive ; but surely these were 
 not unheard-of accompaniments. And the world 
 was no better — rather the worse — for the Mad 
 Grafs swaggering and stalking here and there,
 
 BY THE ELBE. 231 
 
 driving ungovernable horses ; crossing the Elbe 
 when the ice was crashing under foot ; walking over 
 from the hotel roof to the roof of an adjoining 
 house where a friend lodged, as an easy and 
 unpremeditated way of paying that friend a visit ; 
 entering into a scuffle with a sentinel who was 
 only doing his duty ; and dissipating his money as 
 if it were diamond dust. 
 
 She could comprehend that the man's diseased 
 vanity might render him an engrossing hero to 
 himself, but how he could be a hero to every 
 third sane person, even to such foolish young girls 
 as Fra and Lyd, was passing strange to Mary. 
 Yet here was the Griifin von Hersfeld moving 
 heaven and earth to get the hero to be present at 
 her gatherings ; announcing with sparkling eyes 
 to her other guests the treasure she had secured ; 
 approaching him with all her blandishments and 
 the most respectful homage, which he received 
 carelessly, or repulsed with absolute rudeness. 
 
 Here were the Graf von Hersfeld, and other 
 staid and sober-minded men, discussing their brother 
 Count's impertinences and follies, not only with 
 the keenest zest, but with the utmost earnestness, 
 as if they were 'the affairs of the State.' Here were 
 two artisans pausing and laying down their tools 
 in the public streets, that the one might point 
 out to the other den tollen Grafen^ and liere 
 were Dorte and Ursel gaping over their knit- 
 ting at their post at the gate, from which not
 
 232 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 all Mrs. Carteret's EDglish sense of propriety 
 could avail to dislodge tliem — altogether, for 
 the chance of seeing the wonderful nobleman 
 pass by. 
 
 In the case of Baroness Gisela, familiarity 
 with her remarkable kinsman might have bred con- 
 tempt, but the reverse was the truth. Of all the 
 votaries who worshipped at the shrine of the Mad 
 Graf, none was so entranced and devoted as his 
 cousin. Not only was her imagination caught and 
 fired by every circumstance of power, wealth, strik- 
 ing person, individual daring and recklessness, in 
 which the young man differed from Gisela herself, 
 but by a thousand subtle touches of German feeling 
 and romance, which could not come within the 
 sphere of Mary Carteret. In addition, the Mad 
 Graf was fitfully kind and lavish in his favours 
 to his relations ; and Gisela had not so many 
 friends that she should not prize the condescension 
 of this, the most distinguished of their number. 
 He would drive up with a tremendous dash, filling 
 the establishment with proud ferment, to the door 
 of the house in which Madame Marck's Stage was 
 to be found. After waiting, with little more patience 
 than the animals which pawed the road, till the 
 little cousin, summarily summoned, hurried out 
 in her shabby walking dress and mounted — with 
 fear and trembling, for Gisela was not physically 
 brave any more than she was physically strong — 
 to the seat next the noble driver, where he sat with
 
 BY THE ELBE. 233 
 
 strong wrists well turned out, eyes fixed straight 
 before him, and not much conversation, he w^ould 
 carry her off to be part of the show which he 
 desired to make in the Grosse Garten. 
 
 It may be supposed that the excursion was as 
 much of a pain as a pleasure to poor Gisela, who, 
 amonf]^ other antagonistic sensations, hated to 
 know herself conspicuous, and sincerely desired 
 to avoid being stared at. Yet she would never 
 fail to exclaim to Madame Marck on such occa- 
 sions, almost with tears in her eyes : ' What a good 
 heart Fritz has. He likes to have all his appoint- 
 ments perfect, and you know whether or not I am 
 any ornament to his drag.' 
 
 At another time, when he might have driven 
 her in quieter style, or walked out with her, the 
 Graf forgot his cousin entirely, and did not come 
 near her for weeks. He would make her quite 
 costly presents of such flagons and opera glasses 
 as were not to be seen in Dresden out of the 
 Green Vaults, but he would not see that the 
 poor child's fur-lined mantle was moth-eaten, 
 her hat of last year's gone- out fashion, her very 
 gloves mended and re-mended. Madame Marck, 
 though she was both proud and fond of her niece, 
 either misinterpreted the Baroness Gisela's social 
 dignity and immunities — until she regarded it as 
 of little consequence what a young Baroness wore, 
 or reserved her means for greater diplomatic ser- 
 vices in Gisela's behalf, or indulged, in spite of
 
 234 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 her regard for her noble kindred, in the stinginess 
 that, except on special occasions, was one of the 
 aunt's attributes. Probably it was a mixture of 
 all the tliree influences wliich left Gisela so shabby 
 under her well-provided-for aunt's chaperonage. 
 
 Gisela would sing, to all who cared to listen, 
 her cousin Fritz's praises, in which she included 
 his raw-head-and-bloody-bone escapades of duel- 
 ling, his uncalled-for hairbreadth ventures, and 
 audacious supercilious contempt for authority and 
 custom — deeds which in another would have made 
 her own blood run cold, or her cheeks burn, but 
 which in Fritz were so many feathers in his cap 
 and jewels in his crown. 
 
 She would expatiate on his dijSerent castles 
 and seats with their valuable antiques, choice 
 modern French or Viennese furniture and works 
 of art, as if upholstery and articles of virtu were 
 the joys of Gisela's heart ; whereas she was a girl 
 of simple tastes, absolutely unacquainted with art, 
 save in the great art galleries of Germany, to ^vhich 
 no doubt the Graf von Felsberg's galleries could 
 not approach, though Gisela was tempted to be- 
 lieve they did. 
 
 She would boast of his retainers, his dependants, 
 his sway for good or evil over hundreds and hun- 
 dreds of his countrymen, as if Gisela herself were 
 the most ambitious, while she was really, in her 
 proper person, and apart from her family pride, 
 one of the humblest of maidens. It was all the
 
 BY THE ELBE. 235 
 
 glamour of the divergence — wide as the poles be- 
 tween them, and of that picturesque, yet stagey, 
 more or less deliberate madness of the Graf's 
 for which he was perfectly accountable, that 
 had such a hold over his own erratic fancy and 
 over the fancies of more rational people — people 
 who required something pronounced to tickle 
 their fancies, and who relished the operation when 
 it was performed. 
 
 At last Mary Carteret was able to lay hold of 
 the cord that drew Fra and Lycl without fail to 
 Baroness Gisela, and which caused them to be for 
 ever calling for her, beseeching her to walk with 
 them, and to join their coffee krdnzchen. (The 
 last was an institution in copy of the real thing, 
 and with regard to which a select set of young 
 English and foreign girls combined, were solemnly 
 sworn to repair — when they were not better en- 
 gaged, to each other's houses, for coffee and chatter 
 on successive afternoons.) Fra and Lyd over- 
 whelmed the young Baroness with patterns of work 
 and copies of music; they even volunteered to dress 
 her hair for her ; and they were particularly 
 punctual in calling for her to carry her with them 
 to their common parties. 
 
 Gisela, who certainly received in general quar- 
 ters a little transferred lustre from her fortunate 
 relationship, which served to make her poor little 
 baroness-ship go down the more glibly with the 
 court circle and the gaily inclined wealthy
 
 236 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 English and Americans in Dresden, enjoyed, how- 
 ever, no such reflected radiance in the eyes of 
 other hero worshippers, as was poured back upon 
 her by Fra and Lyd Carteret. Gisela encountered 
 no such enthusiastic listeners, who were well 
 nigh rabidly inclined to follow her example as she 
 met in the young English girls. 
 
 The enthusiastic stories of the Graf's boundless 
 wealth and regardless conduct were tlie last straws 
 which broke Fra and Lyd's mental backs. They 
 were cast entirely off their balance. They were 
 interested and fascinated almost bevond their 
 control. 
 
 They spoke, dreamt, and thought of nothing 
 but the Mad Graf. They rushed from end to end 
 of Dresden in the most distant prospect of seeing 
 him. They were as inordinately gratified, and 
 filled as full of wild conceit, by a bow or a word 
 from him, when he came near them indoors or out, 
 in company with the cousin whom they courted 
 flagrantly for his sake, as if the great gaunt and 
 grey Kaiser of all the Germans had stooped from 
 his throne to speak to them, or some ineffably 
 and learned wise professor, like Era's first teacher 
 of music, had vouclisafed to commend their play- 
 ing and drawing. 
 
 While Mr. and Mrs. Carteret, only half con- 
 scious of the mischief, looked on passively, Mary 
 did not know how it was to end. Her consolation 
 was that the Mad Graf, in that superb madness of
 
 BY THE ELBE. 237 
 
 his, really took very little notice of the girls, and 
 did not encourage their thraldom. It was there- 
 fore to be hoped that a flame -which had so little 
 fiiel to feed upon, would consume itself only the 
 more rapidly for its fierceness, and would leap 
 out one fine day in cold ashes.
 
 238 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 WHOM MAEY WATCHES AT A SMOKING CONCERT. 
 
 Mr. Carteret was, as Mary had supposed, keenly 
 interested by learning that TafF Penryn was in 
 Dresden. After waiting some days in anticipation 
 of the promised call which was not paid, he began 
 to question liis daughter closely with regard to each 
 particular of her interview, including the details of 
 the young man's appearance and manner. 
 
 The Squire groaned audibly when he heard 
 that Penryn's dress, though perfectly respectable, 
 was inclined to be threadbare, while he had al- 
 luded in conversation with Mary to his mission as 
 a discoverer. ' He'll come to grief,' prophesied 
 Mr. Carteret, ' and he might have done well. 
 Wliat distant relations he has in Germany are 
 unlike the Penryns in England — worthy, well 
 esteemed people. He has followed up his edu- 
 cation commendably. He has abilities and attain- 
 ments which ought to give him a competency, if 
 not distinction among his fellows. As an assistant 
 to a professor, since he has not taken to the Church,
 
 BY THE ELBE. 239 
 
 to law, or to physic, and has not quahfied himself 
 for a Government office, he might be in a perfectly 
 independent, honourable position.' 
 
 Mary did not say, ' How could you expect a 
 searcher into the grand Arcana to descend to 
 teach the rudiments to little boys with satchels on 
 their backs, or even to impart philosophy to flighty, 
 singing, shouting youths, in white caps and long 
 boots, with rapiers, and tasselled pipes ? ' She 
 knew her father would think that she was treating 
 the question too lightly, that he could not bear a 
 joke on this point. She only said,, 'But must 
 there not always be some speculators — shall we 
 call them ? No, dreamers is the better word — in 
 this very wideawake, practical world ? Would it 
 not be considerably the worse for the want of 
 dreamers ? Has it not been once and again de- 
 cidedly the better for them ? You do not mean 
 that the old world, which Charles Kingsley called 
 " faithful and fruitful and young," is grown too 
 old for dreams ? Oh, do not say so, papa. And 
 surely there are always compensations for the 
 dreamers.' 
 
 'But this is wild dreaming, which has no 
 more relation to justifiable visions than the 
 sheerest gambling has to lawful trade ; and what 
 compensation can there be for a broken heart, a 
 lost reason, and starvation ? ' 
 
 • You put it very strongly,' said Mary, wist- 
 fully.
 
 240 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ' I cannot put it too strongly,' said her father. 
 ' I wonder if there has been a strain of craze 
 in these Penryns from the beginning ; if their 
 race to ruin ; if that fellow's withholding my 
 Aunt Sophia from putting the Warren past me, and 
 bestowing it on him, were only earlier instances 
 of it ? But this youngster's dementia is gaining 
 upon him. It must have taken fast hold on him 
 when he referred to it to a casual acquaintance — 
 a girl like you, in a public place.' 
 
 ' You are not more complimentary to girls 
 than he was,' complained Mary ; ' and I don't 
 think the worse of him for letting out a bit of 
 his mind. Do you hold that a clear proof of 
 insanity, sir ? ' 
 
 There was one enviable pecuharity of foreign 
 society as exemplified in Dresden which had 
 already struck Mary. It was shown in a certain 
 freedom and breadth of contrast which has not 
 existed in England for more than a century. 
 
 It meant more than that a man could do 
 abroad what he was not permitted to do at home, 
 even though there were Englishmen expatriated 
 along with himself, standing looking on at every 
 street corner, and under every wayside tree. In 
 addition, what would have been inconvenient and 
 undesirable at home, lost all its inconvenience 
 and undesirability abroad ; in the liberty thus 
 provided there was opportunity granted for an 
 ampler and far more diversified experience.
 
 BY THE ELBE. • 241 
 
 Mary, or any young woman, ' gentle or 
 simple,' beneath the rank of a princess, could 
 traverse the streets of Dresden, walk on the 
 Brlihl Terrace or in the Grosse Garten unattended, 
 and escape observation. She could even enter 
 the theatre and take her seat next the old lady 
 with her knitting, or the party of schoolgirls, as 
 she might have entered a church at home, alone 
 and unsupported, without incurring the smallest 
 annoyance or a shade of censure. JSTay, more ; 
 she could quit a court assembly, if she had the 
 privilege of attending court, and join a few 
 special friends who from love of music, or simply 
 from a taste for variety, had agreed to occupy a 
 table at one of the people's concerts held in some 
 society's rooms or in the public gardens. 
 
 It did not matter — it probably added zest to 
 the entertainment — that the next table was sur- 
 rounded by shopkeepers with their wives and 
 children, by nurserymaids with tlieir charges, by 
 private soldiers, or by peasant visitors to the 
 town. Where sobriety prevailed, as a rule, no 
 contact was feared. 
 
 But Mary held that liberty had reached its 
 height when ladies not only did not decline, but, 
 on the plea of the excellence of the music, coveted 
 a share in the ' smoking concerts,' which were a 
 winter speciality of Dresden. 
 
 She was a little incredulous at first of the 
 propriety of this stretcli of privilege, though she 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 . BY THE ELBE. 
 
 was not one of those unfortunate women whom 
 smoke extinguishes. She had on occasions done 
 what her mother had in her very honeymoon 
 refused to do — borne the Squire company in the 
 smoking-room at the Warren, without considering 
 that her garments were in consequence irreparably 
 defiled. 
 
 But Mary required some amount of evidence 
 to convince her that there was no harm in going 
 with a party, the members of which she knew, to 
 a smoking concert. She was not satisfied with 
 the Gritfin von Hersfeld's inviting Fra and Lyd 
 to accompany her in an expedition which might 
 be half a frolic. It was only when Mary heard 
 of clergymen and quiet-going people — English as 
 well as German, who took their womankind 
 freely to grace those promiscuous gatherings, that 
 she was reconciled to accompanying her sisters, 
 Baroness Gisela, Madame Marck, and some 
 gentlemen of Madame's acquaintance, to a smoking 
 concert. 
 
 The scene was a large hall, furnished with 
 numerous small tables, round which sat family 
 parties or groups of friends. The men — many of 
 them in the light or dark blue uniform, both of 
 officers and privates — were smoking and drinking 
 beer. Some of the drinkers were said occasionally 
 to empty fourteen glasses without disturbing the 
 performer's phlegm. The women were mostly in 
 walking costume. When there were exceptions
 
 BY THE ELBE. 243 
 
 these presented themselves in the usual dark silk 
 or woollen gowns, lace frills, white gloves, and 
 fans, with which Mary was familiar, as the stereo- 
 typed dress at German concerts. The wearers 
 were knitting, drinking coffee or chocolate, and 
 nibbling cake or biscuits. 
 
 The atmosphere was a blue haze, and pungent 
 in its properties, so as to cause Mary's eyes to 
 smart till they grew accustomed to the medium. 
 She was more reminded of the old affliction, the 
 railway waiting-room, than of garden concerts ; 
 but the orchestra relieved the resemblance. 
 
 The music consisted largely of pieces for 
 violins and violoncellos, with an infusion of flutes, 
 trumpets, and drums. As it took place in 
 Germany, it was good, as a matter of course ; 
 though, to Mary's mind, it was also loud for the 
 near neighbourhood of the audience. 
 
 The conductor was a sight to see : liis very 
 bushy hair quivered with excitement. One of 
 the performers was a small boy. There was a 
 young girl among them. She was slight, very 
 pale-faced, with fak hair thrown back. She 
 wore a black silk gown, and carried a great 
 bouquet when it was not her turn *to play. She 
 was said to be a Eussian, making her first appear- 
 ance with the violoncello — a huge instrument in 
 the thin arms that embraced it, and wielded the 
 bow with taste and skill. As a pendant to her 
 was a buxom young woman in pink tarlatane, 
 
 E 2
 
 244 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 with pink roses in her hair, who sang with many 
 a roulade in a clear strong voice, though she was 
 likewise said to be a debutante. 
 
 The evening was exceptional ; it was the 
 anniversary of an old Saxon triunipli, which late 
 events recalled to the public memory with a 
 powerful appeal. 
 
 On this account the performers and the 
 audience alike came down from their high pedestal 
 of musical learning, and deigned, to Mary's 
 satisfaction, to indulge themselves and their 
 neighbours in national melodies and ballads, 
 delivered with enthusiasm and received with 
 loud and long hand-clappings, and with involun- 
 tary, irresistible, by no means unmusical choruses. 
 
 Thus Mary heard not merely ' Die Wacht am 
 Ehein ' and ' Hurrah, Germania,' but their still 
 more impassioned predecessors which woke the 
 land in a former generation, ' Liitzow's Wilde 
 Jagd ' and the ' Schwerthed.' She had also thun- 
 dered with effusion in her ears ' Was ist die 
 Deustchers Vaterland ? ' and the companion ques- 
 tion, ' Wer ist der Deutcher ? ' By a natural 
 process the singers went back, and celebrated 
 Gutenberg and Schwarz, with their names and fame 
 entwined in one song ; then the company got as far 
 off as the great Frederic Barbarossa — to be seen for 
 all time, where he sits in his ivory chair at his 
 marble table, with his beard, of the fire's glow, 
 grown through the table on which his chin rests.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 245 
 
 Being hardly able to extend their recognition of 
 German heroes and heroism to a remoter distance, 
 the performers passed, by a sudden transition, into 
 the homely, domestic, and tender, and sang with 
 applause quite as pronounced and significant, how 
 there drew 'drei Burschen wohl iiber den Ehein ' ; 
 and 
 
 Eoslein, Rcislein, Roslein roth, 
 Roslein auf den Heiden, 
 
 until Mary expected the whole house to break 
 into the nursery doggerel of 'Mein lieber Augustin.' 
 But Mary had not listened without distraction 
 through the evening ; she had been moved by the 
 entrance of TafT Penryn. He came in alone, sat 
 down at one of the unoccupied tables, and began 
 to drink beer and smoke, all by himself. He did 
 not look either prosperous or well. His coat, even 
 among so many work-a-day coats, was manifestly 
 shabby, whilst there was nothing of ostentatious 
 eccentricity and studied carelessness in his out- 
 ward appearance, such as the Mad Graf might 
 sport in his handsome dress. On the contrary, 
 poor brain-struck TafT Penryn's toilette, among 
 other rough toilettes, looked as if he had put it 
 in order, however mechanically, to come into com- 
 pany. His short flaxen hair lay smoothly above 
 his broad brown forehead, his necktie was neatly 
 tied, his cuffs were pulled down ; if his hands 
 were hacked and stained with mechanics' chemi-
 
 246 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 cals, it was either an overlook or because the 
 tokens were ineradicable for the moment. He even 
 wore a narcissus in his button-hole. But Mary 
 judged that the decent threadbareness about the 
 young man was rendered more perceptible by his 
 fagged, almost dazed look. 
 
 He had come out for a diversion from some 
 task which he had been unable to leave altogether 
 behind him. His eyes had the far-away, intent 
 expression which Mary had never been able to 
 forget since she first saw it. It was the introverted 
 shining of eyes which are gazing inwardly, not 
 outwardly, which, in fact, hardly take cognisance 
 of the objects around them. His air was weary 
 and languid ; he poured out his glass of beer and 
 left it undrunk ; he pufied at his pipe by snatches, 
 and with an effort. 
 
 Mary could not think what he came there for, 
 or how he could derive any enjoyment from his 
 share of the entertainment. The entrance fee was 
 passing cheap, certainly ; still, if he would not or 
 could not bring his hand or his mind to any more 
 remunerative calling than following the clue to 
 perpetual motion, he might miss so much as 
 twenty groschen from his purse. 
 
 But as the evening drew on, by the time 
 the people's songs came to be sung, Taff 
 Penryn, who remained unconscious of Mary's 
 presence, and, for that matter, would not have 
 been influenced by it though he had noticed
 
 BY THE ELBE. 247 
 
 it, looked first soothed, then cheered, at last 
 inspired. 
 
 The outward hght came into his blue eyes 
 until they flashed, colour rose in his brown cheek, 
 until from being sallow it grew ruddy ; he clap- 
 ped his hands vigorously at the ' Deutchers Vater- 
 land ' and the song about Gutenberg and Schwarz. 
 
 He looked round and hailed comrades — both 
 soldiers and civilians, one or two of whom came 
 quickly at his greeting to his table, and he clinked 
 his glass jovially with them. His head was bent 
 the farthest forward, his tongue was evidently 
 wagging, when tongues could wag, with the best 
 there. 
 
 He had friends among the performers, when, in 
 the intervals between the parts, these exalted per- 
 sonages came down easily from their elevation, 
 hghted cigars (so far as the men were concerned), 
 received congratulations and exchanged opinions 
 on terms of perfect equality with the audience, in 
 a manner which was more admirable than familiar 
 to Mary. The conductor and the bass fiddle, who 
 would have been welcome anywhere, pushed their 
 way to Taflf Penryn's table, and straightway frater- 
 nised with him and his companions. They were 
 all chaffing each other, it seemed to Mary, poking 
 fun at each other, and elaborating their simple 
 German jokes in their honest German fashion. 
 Especially they were cliaffing TalT Penryn, with 
 utter oblivion of his half-foreign nationality, and
 
 248 . BY THE ELBE. 
 
 he was keeping his ground and giving as good as 
 he got with the perfect good humour of a man 
 who is sure of himself and of his footing among 
 his fellows. 
 
 Shakspeare has made his Dane say, ' They are 
 all mad in England.' Might it be that they were 
 all mad in Germany, or were there such redeeming 
 qualities in TafF Penryn's wits that his associates 
 could afford to overlook what was unhinged in 
 them? 
 
 Of course, like all madmen, his mania was 
 hmited to one subject, and it was plain to-night 
 that he could be withdrawn from it. Was not 
 that a hopeful sign of his madness proving ulti- 
 mately curable, or at least capable of being 
 arrested and kept within its original bounds ? 
 
 Although the bonds and fetters of an artificial 
 state of society, ' unto wliich he was not born,' 
 might cause him to raise his back, metaphorically 
 speaking, against its claim — although morning calls 
 and late dinners were an offence to him — it was clear 
 that where such recreation as he cared for came in 
 his way — indeed, he had gone out of his way 
 to seek this, having an instinct probably that it did 
 him good in his forlornness — he took it cheerfully 
 and thankfully, and profited by it in a high degree. 
 
 He was no morose, unsocial madman in his 
 moonstruck theories, even where the business of 
 the evening was concerned. Mary was sensible 
 that after the songs had dispersed his preoccupa-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 249 
 
 tion, they stirred him. She had seen how the 
 love of his adopted country had swelled in him 
 when patriotism was the order of the evening. 
 She fancied, a httle later, as he drummed with 
 his jEingers a little restlessly on the table, 
 bent his head and turned it aside, it was to 
 hide the moisture which gathered in his eyes ; for 
 was he not as much dedicated to self-denial and 
 self-devotion as a vowed monk, only without 
 credit or reward ? And he was listening to the 
 last Bursche in the song of the ' Drei Burschen,' 
 declaring what the Wirthins Tochterlein — the 
 little maid who lay stiff and still on her bier — had 
 been and was, and would be through all eternity, 
 to him, and to the exquisite summing-up of the 
 typical — 
 
 Rbslein, Roslein, Rcislein roth, 
 Roslein auf den Heiden. 
 
 A little incident occurred which struck Mary 
 particularly, and impressed her more than any- 
 thing else with the perception that this poor young 
 man, in the course of being lost to the world and 
 himself, was a 'kindly man among his kind.' A 
 little child at one of the other tables had strayed 
 from its natural protectors without being observed, 
 and had wandered through the room until it came 
 to Taff Penryn's side. By that time the waif 
 was aware of having lost its small self — a con- 
 sciousness, the horror of which was only deadened
 
 250 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 by the condition of cross sleepiness into which 
 the victim was rapidly passing. 
 
 Taff Penryn caught up the intruder, stayed 
 the lamentations on its lips, seated the bundle 
 without any hesitation on his knee, fed the mfant 
 on biscuits, as if he had been an old nurse or a 
 fatherly elder brother, or a young father in his 
 own person, until he succeeded in drowning the 
 baby cares in sound peaceful slumber. After- 
 wards the youDg man remained contentedly stand- 
 ing the fire of comment and jest, which did not in 
 that company proceed the length of ridicule, with 
 the burden on his knee — hoisting it up again as 
 often as it slipped down, till the heads so like 
 each other in colour came once more into close 
 contact — or softly tapping its cheek to see that it 
 was all right, till its careless proprietor reclaimed 
 it from him. 
 
 It was not much of an incident in such an 
 audience. The only remark which Mary heard 
 it call forth, was that made by Madame Marck, 
 who, in indicating the group, designated Taflf 
 Penryn by a term which, so far as the writer 
 knows, exists only in German, and seems to have 
 been made for such a philosopher as the investiga- 
 tor of perpetual motion. ' Do you see what that 
 young man with the broad forehead has got in 
 his arms, instead of one of the Spitze or Stecke 
 which run ordinarily at our students' heels and are 
 apt to intrude into the concerts? He must
 
 BY THE ELBE. 251 
 
 be a Kindernarr'' (a fool where children are 
 concerned). 
 
 ' Oh ! ' said Fra, ' I know him : that is a sort of 
 protege of papa's, who had *him once at the 
 Warren.' 
 
 ' Era,' interposed Mary indignantly, ' How 
 can you say so ? Papa has no proteges ; he 
 would not like youi' use of the term, least of all 
 in the present instance.' 
 
 'It is the proper term, for all that,' said 
 Fra indifferently, ' though papa has not been 
 able to make anything of this man. He is half 
 English, madame, but I am sorry to say he is 
 ndrrisch all over. Look another way, Lyd. He 
 would not be an agreeable person to be en- 
 tangled with ; if it were only to bow to here — I 
 do not mean literally here in the concert room, 
 which is Liberty Hall, and where I should really 
 have wished to be introduced to the conductor, in 
 order to ask why he gave that morsel of Eeinecke's 
 in such a peculiar time, and at what shop I can get 
 it to buy.' 
 
 For days afterwards Mary's gown smelt of the 
 smoking concert, and the prosaic odour never 
 came across her senses without a vision of the 
 ' Kindernarr,' and his misdirected genius, bringing 
 with it a pensive echo of Mr. Carteret's words, 
 ' What compensation can there be for a broken 
 heart, a lost reason, and starvation ? '
 
 252 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE MOTLEY INGREDIENTS OF A PLEASURE PARTY. 
 
 Mary had got still more accustomed to life on 
 an etage^ to Semmeln or Ilornchen in place of rolls 
 or a loaf of bread as the staff of life, and to 
 Rehbraten as a piece de resistance at the dinner 
 table. She had grown used to every shopman or 
 woman whose goods she bought, dismissing her 
 with a friendly Ade. She was famihar with the 
 fact that every fifth or sixth male passer-by in the 
 streets on a Sunday formed an example of the 
 curious combination of a spectacled nose and a 
 soldier's uniform. She had ceased to be taken 
 aback by the sight of the girl kuitting industriously 
 while she sold her bouquets at the flower stall, of 
 the matron making up her accounts at the window, 
 and of the gardener pruning his bushes, on the 
 way to the English church. 
 
 It was summer already in Dresden, so far as 
 the balmy air went ; the song of birds was heard 
 in the gardens, and was answ^ered by the joyous 
 response of the people hurrying to resume open-air 
 recreations and innumerable excursions in steam-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 253 
 
 boats, in omnibuses, and in open drosckies — yet 
 the month was only April. True, the cherry and 
 pear trees, which make not only gardens but whole 
 hill sides white with blossom, near the town by 
 the Elbe, were hanging out their white flags, which 
 estabhshed a long truce with ice-cold winds, while 
 they were in flagrant opposition to the snow- 
 shroud that had quite lately, -within six short 
 weeks, indeed, melted from the earth. The forest 
 trees, not evergreen, were doffing their brown with 
 marvellous celerity, and the lilac in the Japanese 
 palace was budding and breaking out into frag- 
 rant dusky purple or pinkish lavender plumes. 
 The long processions of rafts on the muddy 
 water were not merely an occasional, but were 
 fast becoming an incessant spectacle, as the 
 woodmen hastened to bring down the planks 
 of felled trees, their winter's work, to the high- 
 way that was only open to them when the sun 
 shone high and warm in the sky. On the banks 
 of the river the vines were lifting light green shoots 
 and tendrils to grasp the regiments of bare poles, 
 and lend verdiu-e to what was otherwise bleak 
 and skeleton like. The King and Queen, whose 
 punctual going and coming formed almost as good 
 a sign of the calendar as the flight of the swallows, 
 would only let another moon rise and set in its 
 four quarters before they quitted their winter 
 palace in the centre of their capital and people, and 
 repaired by a morning's sail to their summer
 
 254 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 retreat at Pilnitz, or to some slightly more remote 
 schloss, or princely resort among the German 
 watering places. 
 
 It was strange to feel this sudden, yet rather 
 sweet than brilhant advent of summer — and that 
 not in a land where roses bloom at Christmas and 
 orange trees never cease to scent the air, but in a 
 region associated with snow and ice, with winter 
 nights that begin at three o'clock in the afternoon, 
 and need all the pretty pageantry of Christmas 
 trees to lighten them, and by a river which has a 
 half savage character like the Elbe. 
 
 Mr. Carteret, who had tutored himself into 
 something like submission to his narrow lot while 
 the winter lasted, was seized with such an intoler- 
 able fit of restlessness, and sick recalling of spring 
 activities — of the breaking up of fallow ground 
 and the smell of newly turned mould, and of runs 
 with the hounds, that he felt there was no resource 
 but a temporary change of scene to carry off the 
 fit of spleen. An excuse was afforded him in the 
 fortnight's closing of the Gallery for its yearly 
 cleaning, which robbed him of the semblance of an 
 occupation beyond the limits of his own study. 
 
 He would go with his family into Saxon 
 Switzerland quite at hand, but as different from 
 See Strasse or Prager Strasse, as Loch Goyle 
 from the Salt Market or the Gallowgate of Glas- 
 gow. His wife and daughters had not yet seen 
 the Bastei or the Kuhstal, the Winterberg or
 
 BY THE ELBE. 255 
 
 the Prebischtlior, and he hnnself had not re- 
 visited the great pine woods and fantastic rocks 
 since his bachelor days at Dresden. The season 
 was very early still, but a devoted countryman 
 hke Mr. Carteret knew well the exquisite fleeting 
 charm of the fresh spring days, which no later 
 and fuller growth can recall ; and the party would 
 escape the crowd of summer and autumn tourists 
 from which they had suffered suinciently the pre- 
 vious year. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret was propitious : she brightened 
 up at the idea — not so much of the scenery, 
 though she admired that in a calm way which 
 indulged largely in comparisons, but of well- 
 conned time-tables, well-conceived arrangements — 
 not a meal out of time, not a rush to boat or 
 train, not a field glass lacking, not a great 
 white umbrella left behind, and wraps never 
 in the way yet always to be found when wanted. 
 The climax was reached with the sound of 
 Mr. Carteret's pleased testimony, 'My dear, 
 you never forget anything ; ' Mary's half-despair- 
 ing exclamation, 'Mamma, how do you manage 
 it all? and you will never let me be your sub- 
 stitute that I may learn ; ' Fra's call for some 
 luxury unheard of in the circumstances, which 
 yet was there to answer to the call ; and Lyd's 
 sigh of refreshment and satisfaction. 
 
 Mary's alacrity was quite equal to that of her 
 mother, though it had a different source.
 
 256 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Fra and Lyd were rather indifferent at first. 
 A family excursion had become quite flat to them; 
 but the Dresden season was dying by gasps, and 
 the Grafin von Hersfeld was already gone for an 
 anticipatory week to herald the Hersfelds' sub- 
 sequent removal to their place in the country for 
 the summer. The grand parting and dispersion 
 were being broken by degrees to society ; and in 
 the meantime Fra and Lyd would lose the less 
 from their own brief withdrawal. But they 
 stipulated for a provision against the dire dull- 
 ness of having nobody to look at or speak to 
 save mamma and papa, and Polly, by getting 
 Baroness Gisela invited to join the party. 
 
 Mary Avas glad that her sisters had enter- 
 tained this thought, though she herself made no ad- 
 vance in her acquaintance with the half-shy, half- 
 proud young girl. ' Because Fra and Lyd make 
 a sort of bogie of me,' said Mary to herself a 
 little indignantly, ' they descant on my superiority 
 of age and airs of wisdom, which I cannot help 
 sporting when they will be foolish, and render 
 themselves ridiculous. They force me to be 
 stuck up and disagreeable. I dare say the time 
 will soon come when no young person will look 
 at me, and when I shall be as much turned over 
 to the elderly people as if I were a governess or 
 duenna.' 
 
 However, there was no mistaking the un- 
 affected pleasure which the receipt of the invita-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 257 
 
 tion, approved of as it Avas by Madame Marck, 
 gave to the little Baroness. 
 
 All was going well for the expedition, when 
 Mr. Carteret came in one day, and told Mary 
 that he had met young Penryn in the street, had 
 got his address, had gone with him to his pension, 
 which had proved a very tolerable pension, and 
 had ended by bidding him come over and go with 
 them on their excursion, ' which he was induced 
 to consent to,' ended Mr. Carteret. ' I thought 
 it better than to propose having him to dine here, 
 when I saw him ready to fly off on that hint. I 
 cannot reconcile it to my conscience to be done 
 with the young fellow; after all, he will injure 
 nobody save himself, and, what is better, he 
 seems bent on being indebted to nobody. lie 
 has been acting as aide to the royal librarian, 
 and I suppose has been earning money in that 
 way for his freaks. I must go and tell your 
 mother. I trust it will not put her out.' 
 
 ' No,' said Mary, ' she is always hospitably 
 inclined, and she is a courageous woman. I 
 imagine he will not be in anybody's way,' she 
 added more doubtfully. She was thinking of Fra 
 and Lyd and Baroness Gisela — of what would be 
 the former's disgust with their father's selection of 
 a strange element in the family party, on the one 
 hand — and on the other of Taff Pcnryn's invul- 
 nerability to girls' attractions. 
 
 But the sensation excited by Taff Penryn's 
 
 VOL. r. s
 
 25S BY THE ELBE. 
 
 being caught and pressed into the company was 
 faint indeed wliere Mary was concerned, com- 
 pared to the whirlwind of excitement raised in 
 Fra and Lyd, when they came racing in with 
 the information that Baroness Gisela had an- 
 nounced to them she had been telhng her cousin, 
 the Graf Von Felsberg, of their intended sail, 
 and he had said he should not care to hire a 
 boat for himself, and come up with them some- 
 where in the course of their journey. 
 
 Baroness Gisela followed hard on the steps of 
 her messengers, herself so breathlessly elated as 
 to be almost scared by the greatness of the 
 tidings. It was as if the King had given out 
 that he should sail in their wake and take them 
 in. No flourish of trumpets wliich announced the 
 arrival of Prince George, the bluff heir apparent, 
 would have had a tithe of the effect produced. 
 
 It did not seem to strike any of the younger 
 girls interested that the Mad Graf was taking 
 an unwarrantable liberty in thus tacking himself 
 on, as an out of doors, off and on, so to speak, 
 member of a party, when he had not been so much 
 as introduced to its chief. 
 
 Mr. Carteret thought it would be as well for 
 the sake of the Baroness Gisela, to wave his sense 
 of the impertinenec, ' I fancy the fellow is so 
 spoilt that he believes he can do anything. I con- 
 clude I had better leave my card and permission 
 for him to come with us in the orthodox fashion.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 251) 
 
 We are not to suffer a chase and be the spectacle 
 and the talk of the day to all the idle onlookers 
 from the Briihl terrace,' said Mr. Carteret. 
 
 But the Graf, though he was perfectly pohte, 
 as became a Graf, in receiving Mr. Carteret's 
 overtures, was as difficult to deal with as ever. 
 He could not decide on his movements beforehand. 
 He should really prefer to take them in ; perhaps 
 he might not turn up after all. 
 
 On receiving this communication Fra and Lyd 
 began, between themselves and the Baroness 
 Gisela, to lament bitterly that papa had interfered 
 and done mischief, so that such a delightful 
 promise and so great a triumph over their 
 associates might come to nothing. The Graf 
 hated to be meddled with, or counselled, or to 
 have it so much as suggested to him to do as his 
 neighbours did, when he was always prompted to 
 be as unhke the rest of the world as possible. 
 That was the very thing — together with his birth, 
 possessions and personal attributes, which made 
 him so charming. 
 
 'Xever mind, meine F7'eundin?ie7i,' said B-droncss 
 Gisela, ' I tliink Fritz will come after all ; he has 
 nothing else to do that I know of. He is waitinf^- 
 to drive his four-in-liand in the Corso-Fahrten, 
 but till then I am persuaded he has not a single 
 engagement he cares to keep.' 
 
 Fra and Lyd submitted meekly to take this 
 crumb of comfort, though from any other quarter 
 
 8 2
 
 260 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 and in respect to any other person, they would 
 have scouted an admission so httle flattering to 
 their powers of subjugation. 
 
 ' Tlie plot thickens,' said Mary to her father. 
 ' We are to carry off Mr. Penryn against his will, 
 and the Mad Graf, who will not behave himself 
 Kke any ordinary person — I wonder that you had 
 heard so little of him as to expect it — is to steal 
 a march upon us, if the fancy take him, against 
 our will.' 
 
 ' I have told the fellow,' protested her father 
 in some heat, ' that he may come or stay as he 
 chooses ; for that matter the steamboat is public 
 property ; but we cannot be parties to the boat's 
 being kept back — I have heard of such tricks — 
 to enable him to come up, and we do not bind 
 ourselves to wait for him at any particular point.' 
 ' And even if he arrive like a commonplace 
 man,' said Mary mischievously, 'it is getting 
 serious. Papa, have you thought of the conse- 
 quences of taking not one, but two madmen on 
 board ? What if Taff Penryn should go down 
 into the engine-room, play ducks and drakes with 
 the machinery, and blow us all up, simply to 
 judge, if he be spared for judgment, how far the 
 force of steam will propel him? What if the 
 Graf take a header from the bow just to see and 
 hear how we shall stare and scream, and to put 
 us to the trouble of saving him ? ' 
 
 ' I think we may trust to the steamboat
 
 BY THE ELBE. 261 
 
 captain, and to the Graf himself, who has method 
 in his madness. But remember the last importa- 
 tion was not my doing.' 
 
 ' I freely absolve you from it,' said Mary. 
 
 As it was, the party started on the trip without 
 hindrance, and without any odd exploit, which 
 would have been mortifying to Mr. Carteret, 
 on the part of the Graf. He thought better of 
 it in the middle of his rampant vanity and self- 
 will. He Avas so far coerced by the firm but 
 courteous tone which had been adopted towards 
 him on the part of the grave, quiet Englishman, 
 the lather of marriageable daughters, who yet 
 did not defer by a hair's breadth to the Graf's 
 immense capabilities as a marriageable man. 
 
 The Graf was only moderately late in striding 
 down coolly to the landing-place, where the boat's 
 bell was ringing witli a hysteric vehemence of 
 tingling, and in crossing the space of Avater whicli 
 the lifted gangway had exposed, by a flying leap. 
 It was a tame performance — though it did extract 
 a stifled scream Avith a few heart throbs from 
 Gisela, and some brt)ad smiles from Fra and Lyd — 
 to be given by a man who had fought his eleventh 
 duel, and been in prison for the space of a j^ear 
 because of the same. That he had not made his 
 escape from prison had been, and was to tliis day, 
 a terrible chagrin to the poor Graf. He had 
 indulged in attempts to escape, which had been 
 hushed up because of his position ; for, alas ! the
 
 262 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ill-concerted attempts had proved abortive. In 
 tlie meantime he was contented to stamp about 
 majestically, or to climb to eachcoigne of vantage 
 on which he could stand like a statue or a Childe 
 Harold, as Mary confided to her father. At the 
 same time she was forced to grant that it was an 
 original version of the part, as she never imagined 
 that the Graf had read the poem even in a trans- 
 lation, neither did she hold that misanthropy 
 had anything to^do with his cue, which was dignity 
 and total irresponsibility in tatters. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, the Grafs gratuitous dis- 
 play of himself in solitary conspicuousness — the 
 earnestness of which somehow borrowed an air of 
 sombreness — was not unwarranted, as unquestion- 
 ably it was not unprized. From the best-informed 
 official to the hiunblest fellow-passenger who re- 
 cognised him, the good fortune of being literally 
 in the same boat with the Mad Graf of Felsberj? 
 was hugged, and passed around with nods, winks, 
 and nudges. 
 
 But if the Graf could not help being impressed 
 by Mr. Carteret's well-bred indifference to his 
 pretensions, he was still more struck with Mrs. 
 Carteret's unworldliness. He w^as welcom.e to her 
 as the girls' friend and Baroness Gisela's cousin, 
 whom the young people liked to have in their 
 train. For her part she could not say that she 
 found him an agreeable young man, but tastes 
 differed. As to all the talk of the antiquity of
 
 BY THE ELBE. 2G3 
 
 his title and the extent of his estates, they might 
 be worth countiuo- in a German nobleman, but 
 she was an English squire's wife. 
 
 Mary's pecuharities dawned more gradually on 
 the Graf, though they were to be the crowning 
 marvel. He began to notice this day that she 
 did not look at or pay attention to him more than 
 she did to anyone else. She Avas quite as attentive 
 to that out-of-elbows student fellow, who might be 
 a secretary, or tutor, or Kammer Musikus, to such 
 a magnate as himself or to Mr. Carteret, who, in 
 his English republicanism — here tlie Graf, who 
 was by no means clearheaded, confounded an 
 Englishman with an American — chose to treat the 
 retainer as an equal. 
 
 The other girls were engrossed with the Graf 
 and in ecstasies at his presence ; but Miss Carteret 
 took it very composedly. While her sisters, and 
 even little Gisela, wore their nicest traveUing 
 dresses and prettiest plumed hats in his honour, 
 Miss Carteret was the liandsomest of any of 
 them, and at the same time, as if she had for- 
 gotten all about herself, in a dingy blue gown, 
 which the Graf was not able to identify as an old 
 iiivourite yachting dress, and in a rough shady, 
 shapeless hat, which looked as if she could put it 
 off or on, or fdl it Avith rubbishy (lowers or fir 
 cones, without any detriment. 
 
 Taff Penryn liad indeed descended to the 
 engine-room, and remained some minutes there,
 
 26-4 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 but apparently it did not occur to him to do more 
 than report disparagingly that the machinery was 
 out of date and shockingly ineffective ; afterwards 
 he sat down submissively on deck, and looked 
 about him like his neighbours. 
 
 There was not a shade of hostility, while 
 there was nothing that admitted of fraternity, even 
 during; an excursion amono; the woods and moun- 
 tains, between the two young men of the party. It 
 was not that the Graf stood out on his superior rank, 
 unless in being more punctihous and ceremoniously 
 civil in any personal intercourse with Taff Penryn, 
 than Mary had ever heard of the Graf's showing 
 himself to his contemporaries. He was too great 
 a Graf for insolence to social inferiors. 
 
 However this pleasure party remained long 
 engraven on the Grafs mind, as having done 
 more to open wide his restless blue eyes — so 
 far removed from Taff Penryn's still blue eyes — 
 than any other separate event in the whole course 
 of his education. Among other curious studies it 
 presented to the but half-comprehending Graf — 
 the contemplation of a young man of some genius, 
 of great application, and of one fixed purpose, 
 which was beyond the conception of his fellow- 
 men, and altogether outside of himself.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 265 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 ox THE ELBE. 
 
 After the late fine weather the early morning had 
 been gloomy and rather threatening, but the tra- 
 vellers had made the best of it. The scenery had 
 been pretty from the beginning, with white houses 
 in greenery and perpetual little terraced vineyards 
 rising to some height on one side. 
 
 Opposite Blasewitz, at another village orne 
 summer retreats of the richer Dresdeners, in a 
 summer house which had belonged to the Korner 
 family, Schiller had written ' Don Carlos ; ' and in 
 another house further up the river Weber had 
 composed ' Der Freischiitz,' and ' Oberon.' 
 
 Barges passed the steamboat with the motto 
 painted above the cabin door, ' Got mit uns,' just 
 as Mary on her first arrival in Dresden had read 
 on the front of a house opposite her hotel the 
 distich — 
 
 * Wer Got vertraut, 
 Hat wohl gebaut.' 
 
 A quaint little village church, with a round bell
 
 266 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 tower and black spire to show above the snow in 
 winter, stood well out into the river. Every sum- 
 mer evenino; its bell rang; to call the cattle from 
 the neighbouring pastures to the milking ground. 
 
 The long, low, royal palace of Pilnitz, one in a 
 cluster of princely Schlosser gathered together in 
 the neighbourhood, came in sight. It formed a 
 square, with innumerable little burnished pinnacles 
 all over the roof Its grounds were laid out in 
 terraces and labyrinths formed by high beech and 
 yew hedges, which were gravely said to be pro- 
 vided for court flirtations. There was also talk of 
 a charming little court theatre w^hich had fallen 
 into disuse, but was to be resumed. Still, the 
 great attractions of Pilnitz were the noble river, 
 with the wooded island just in ft'ont' of the 
 palace, and the King's vineyards, extending along 
 the heights. 
 
 It was Taff Penryn wdio was the pleasant gay 
 cicerone of these parts. The river, the sailing, 
 and the scenery had drawn him out of himself, 
 and stimulated — well-nigh intoxicated him, as the 
 beer, the music, and a comrade or two had acted 
 upon him at the smoking concert. 
 
 Mr. Carteret congratulated himself on the im- 
 provement. 
 
 Mary gladly profited by the fit ciceroneship. 
 
 The Graf, wdio Avas a silent young man by 
 nature, as well as rather ignorant from a neglected 
 education, drew near, listened, and stared a little.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 2G7 
 
 ' Ho^v can the fellow do it ? ' he said, simply, in his 
 laboured French, for his English was all but null, 
 to Fra. ' He speaks as if he were reading out of 
 a book — without being so tkesome — what a me- 
 mory he must have ! ' 
 
 ' People like him have not much to cumber 
 their memories, Herr Graf,' answered Fra, loftily. 
 
 Mary was forced to lean over the side of the 
 boat to hide her laui^^hter. Fra had included her- 
 self with the Graf. Even so far as he was con- . 
 cerned, it was difficult to realise, what Mary knew 
 to be true, that he had great interests depending 
 upon him — but the idea of Era's mind being too 
 cumbered for traveller's tales ! Well, if the Graf 
 ever shared his lordship and lands with Fra, of 
 which there was not the slightest symptom, there 
 would be a mad Grafin to keep company with the 
 Mad Graf. Fra had just such another outrageous 
 conception of dignity and originality, only she had 
 not as yet so fme a field to display it in. 
 
 The v^•eather began to brighten, and the blue 
 sky to appear, thougli the day was not clear. 
 
 The rafts were on each side of the steamboat, 
 undulating like live creatures, while tlie men in 
 front and the men behind, guided tliem with tlieir 
 long poles. TafT Penryn showed Mary how they 
 were moored by the banks at niglit ; and she 
 watched one of the men in his dripping sea boots 
 cooking his mid-day meal at the stove in the centre 
 of the barge.
 
 268 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Mary's attention strayed away from the barge- 
 man to an elderly peasant couple in the steerage 
 of the steamboat. The man with a tanned leather 
 face, wore yellow breeches, a brown coat and cap, 
 and smoked a large yellow wood pipe with a 
 double bowl, while he cast furtive, admiring, but 
 still phlegmatic glances at the Graf. The brisk 
 old wife, whose skin was little fairer than her 
 weather-worn partner's, sat in her jacket and head- 
 kerchief, and knitted with all her might, sticking 
 her knitting-needles, when she was not using them 
 in her hair under the kerchief. She did not miss a 
 single look or gesture, either of the Graf's or of 
 any other man, woman, or child's in the company. 
 
 The town of Pirna, half on the one side, half on 
 the other, and with a bridge under which the steam- 
 boat passed, spanning the Elbe, looked its best in 
 this season of fruit blossoms. The g^rand old 
 fortress of Sonnenschein, a huge barrack, furnished 
 with towers, was situated on the height above the 
 town. Mary could not resist glancing comically 
 at her father, for the fortress had been utilised as 
 a formidable lunatic asylum. 
 
 From Pirna the quarrying of the hills for 
 sandstone to be transported by the river com- 
 menced. It injured the natural line of the 
 banks, and lent a new and starinsr look to 
 portions of the scenery. On the other hand, the 
 rich yellow colour of the quarried sandstone
 
 BY THE ELBE. 269 
 
 among the prevailing green of the wooded heights 
 Ht them up as with gleams of golden sunshine. 
 
 The scenery had grown wild and beautiful, 
 the broad river passed through a succession of 
 deep-wooded gorges, dove-tailing into each other, 
 and sometimes shutting it in like a lake. Out of 
 the blue green of the vast pine w^oods, against 
 which straggling birch or beech trees stood out 
 vividly in their tender spring green, grey rocks 
 rose in the forms of towers and battlements — not 
 fluted as in basalt, but placed in layers, or rather 
 built stone upon stone, and hardly distinguishable 
 from massive masonry. Sometimes tremendous 
 single blocks of grotesque shape varied the effect. 
 
 Mary had never beheld a spot which answered 
 so well to the old-world legends of the Titans 
 and the Gods. But no heavy pall of cloud or 
 raging tumult of the heavens hung or surged over 
 it ; instead, there was a benign though not very 
 bright spring sky — the mild blue all dappled and 
 flecked with white cloudlets like a flock of harm- 
 less sheep. And here was one of the triumphs of 
 modern science in the shape of passenger and 
 luggage boats coming up twice a day, with the 
 whiz of their steam and the clatter of their paddle- 
 wheels, to bring civilisation and comfort — one 
 might be thankful, but, alas ! in inevitable sequence 
 to lend the last prosaic touch, even as it brought 
 the last nineteenth-century news from the world 
 into the wilderness. There remained only for
 
 270 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Taff Penryn to pierce tlie deep secret of perpetual 
 motion to render the transformation of this and 
 every other wilderness complete. 
 
 The party were close upon the Bastei, the 
 most gigantic of the natural battlements, which 
 rise from the river and command the wooded 
 underground. 
 
 As they sailed past, with even the Graf moved 
 to ignore himself, and the three younger girls to 
 lose sight of him, crowd with the rest of the 
 passengers to the side of the steamboat, and gaze 
 up with something of awe reflected in their 
 eyes at the giddy frowning height — there was 
 descried far overhead, first a tiny building on 
 the summit of the crags, and then human figures, 
 like pigmies, clustered on a bridge, wiiich might 
 have been a straw, leaning against a balustrade, 
 and waving greetings from their eyrie to the 
 fellow-creatures, like so many flies on a leaf 
 floatino; alono; the river at their feet. 
 
 The plan was that the party should land at 
 Eathen, take luncheon, chmb to the Bastei, 
 return and dine oflf what dinner could be found 
 at the Erbgericht Hans, and then sit on the terrace 
 waiting for the evening steamer which should 
 carry them on to Schandau. 
 
 Mary's first impression of Eathen Avas that it 
 was a little paradise, with its cottages, yellow or 
 white, crossed with wood and roofed with red tiles, 
 set among lindens and blossoming cherry-trees.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 271 
 
 planted by the river, and Laving its own ruin of its 
 own grey feudal castle on a rising ground just 
 beyond. 
 
 But a short familiarity convinced her that even 
 in a little paradise flaws and faihngs have to 
 be met and mastered. The sole spring waiter 
 could speak nothing save German, but, by dint of 
 his twice-a-day visit to the Dresden steamboat, 
 was a man about town acquainted with all the 
 gossip and scandal of the hour, compared to the 
 peasants around him. After his last descent to 
 the boat — a descent which had secured this goodly 
 group of passengers, with their travelling bags, as 
 well as the briefest of chats with the men on the 
 gangway — he snatched a moment to convey to 
 the short-skirted, bare-legged Kammer Miidchen 
 such a sensational narrative in three words of the 
 Mad Graf and his feats, as caused the girl to gape 
 and grin and expose the absence of half of her 
 front teeth. The story, though it was evidently 
 more pleasurable than painful, resulted in dire 
 confusion. 
 
 It is true that everywhere in Germany, as in 
 Switzerland— it is no matter how remote or even 
 inaccessible the place may be, if the scenery or 
 the history of the place attracts tourists — there are 
 to be found restaurants, with their terraces shaded 
 by lime or birch trees overhanging the river — 
 if there be a river — carefully su])phed witli little 
 tables and wicker chairs without, and at least one
 
 272 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 long habitable room, Fremde Salon, or Speise Saal, 
 within. But it is not the way of tourist to appear 
 at these restaurants with the first flicker of spring 
 sunshine ; and for those travellers w^ho have ways 
 of their own, they must be content to accept the 
 situation in halting attendance and scantily-filled 
 homely larders. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret could not have conceived the 
 state of matters, or provided against it, had she 
 been able to anticipate it. She had to submit to be 
 baffled, to hearing Mr. Carteret, a much-enduring 
 man in such circumstances, murmuring that the 
 cold meat, the only meat to be had, was like slices 
 of cork. She herself was reduced to protesting 
 that the omelette must have been made on no 
 principles of cooking tliat she had ever heard of. 
 She had to listen to Fra and Lyd, after they 
 had swallowed all the white bread in the 
 establishment, clamouring in vain for more. She 
 had to consider that she had been a party to 
 bringing others — the Baroness, the Graf, though 
 these two, being Germans, seemed in some 
 measure accountable for the disastrous deficiencies 
 and Taff Penryn — into the strait. And this was 
 lunch. There was the still more dismal prospect 
 of the dinner to be looked forward to. 
 
 The immediate misfortune pressed most heavily 
 on Mrs. Carteret, who, to do her justice, cared as 
 httle for what she ate or drank as any lady be- 
 longing by right to a land of sohd joints and
 
 BY THE ELBE. 273 
 
 light puddings. She was worried ; a headache 
 followed, and she was not fit to walk to the Bastei 
 with the rest of the party. She wished nobody to 
 stay behind on her account ; but it was clear every- 
 body would not leave her forlorn. 
 
 Most people are familiar with the depressing 
 effect of any — the smallest accident and division 
 of forces occurring in such an excursion. At last 
 a compromise Avas accomplished — one of the sure- 
 footed ponies, plentiful enough in the summer, was 
 procured. Mrs. Carteret, who had not ridden much 
 since she was a bride, was induced to mount, and 
 thus attempt the ascent, with the guide at the 
 poney's head and her husband by her side, a 
 mode of progress which she did not altogether 
 dislike. 
 
 Thus the elders led the way, and the young 
 people followed. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 27 i BY THE ELBE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE BASTEI. 
 
 ' I WILL be your gnicle for the day, do let me,' 
 cried Taff Penryn, still drunk with the air, the 
 pleasant stir, the fine scenery. 'I know the 
 country as well as the guides ; and I promise 
 you I shall not try to get money out of you, 
 though I need it badly,' he added, with a merry 
 jest at his own impecuniosity, wdiich was so im- 
 proper that it caused Fra to frown and the Graf 
 to stare amain. 
 
 The way led first by a pretty little saw-mill 
 and a high green bank starred with wood sorrel ; 
 the road then wound round and round by a sandy 
 track, the base of the huge Bastei. Nobody's 
 breath was taxed as yet ; but in a few minutes the 
 party were in a wood toiling up a footpath, some- 
 times climbing steps, sometimes defended from 
 the loose soil of steep declivities by rustic fences, 
 sometimes creeping under boulders, on which the 
 ambition of small men had carved names, using 
 ladders for the purpose, that the notoriety might 
 reach high enough. At one point a king had
 
 EY THE ELBE. 275 
 
 condescended to head in gilt letters the vulgar 
 throno". 
 
 The Graf looked wistfully and excitedly at 
 these records ; he loitered over them and relin- 
 quished ungallantly for their leisurely inspection 
 what had been to the girls the dear delight of his 
 assistance in climbing. It was not unmixed de- 
 light, especially to Baroness Gisela and Lyd. He 
 had a habit of snatching at and dragging along 
 the object of his assistance, which, as Mary re- 
 membered, was in keeping with his style of 
 dancing, when he danced. She had seen him 
 not only button his coat, but deliberately empty 
 his pockets, before he took up a partner and 
 whirled her round the room in the firiest and 
 most frantic of waltzes or polkas. 
 
 The Graf had never asked Mary to dance, and 
 now she absolutely declined his brusque offers of 
 help, especially after she saw him catch up Gisela, 
 and in spite of her alarmed, ^Ach! bitte, bitte, 
 Fritz,' spring with her across a chasm, and set 
 her down so shaken that there were no more of 
 her enraptured '■Himmelisches ' and ' Wunder- 
 schons,^ for some time to come. 
 
 ' Thou little goose, didst thou think I had not 
 strength enough to carry thee — thou little sparrow, 
 or that I should let thee go ? ' he remonstrated, 
 scornfully. It was play to him, though it was 
 torment to her. ' He is so strong,' she gasped to 
 
 T 'Z
 
 276 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Mary, with wliom she had taken refuge, ' and he 
 is naturally fond of showing his strength.' 
 
 ' At the expense, as well as in the service of, 
 the weak,' answered Mary ; but Gisela did not 
 follow her, and imagined that she was not compre- 
 hending Mary's English. 
 
 Taff Penryn vindicated his claims to be an ex- 
 cellent escort, by calling attention to each 
 eccentric giant of a gaunt and grim or well-grown 
 and rounded-out mass of a rock as it rose in turn, 
 and came into view in the forest boundary, nam- 
 ing the rocks by the countrypeople's foolish 
 familiar names, and telling each fond legend that 
 clung to them. Here was the ' Turk,' so named on 
 accoimt of a supposed resemblance to a Turk's 
 cap. There was the ' Maiden's Spring,' comme- 
 morating the leap from the jagged summit by which 
 a true German maiden preferred death to dis- 
 honour. This was the ' Locomotive,' a very modern 
 and prosaic nickname — it seemed people's fancies 
 were departing along with their rudeness. That 
 was the ' Sheep,' not much better. But the ' Kaisers 
 Krone ' was a vast improvement ; and yonder was 
 the ^ Nonnenstein,' to the sharp pinnacle of which he 
 could assure them a stainless nun was borne out of 
 the corruption of her convent, and in that refined 
 air, though not on the highest pinnacle on winch 
 she had first alighted, she wore out the rest of her 
 life in piety and industry. He would confess that 
 he should have preferred if she had either remained
 
 BY THE ELBE. 277 
 
 aloft, a feminine version of St. Simon Stylites, or if 
 she had trudcfed back to her convent and done her 
 best to reform it. There was a great descent in- 
 volved in her coming down at all — after she had 
 once got up, she might have been preserved in her 
 exaltation — there was also a painful inutihty in her 
 wasting her piety and austerity on the desert air. 
 But of course he was a lieretic, and could not under- 
 stand ; he had nothing to do with the explanation, 
 he had the happier duty of telling the stories. 
 
 He told them with such mingled spirit and 
 fun, that though some of his audience struggled 
 after his English speech with mucli trouble, even 
 while they had German names and references to 
 hold on by, everybody applauded. 
 
 TafT Penryn, to Mary's amusement, achieved a 
 small triumph, if he had cared for it. 
 
 Fra, in her cleverness and quickness of repartee, 
 was attracted in spite of herself, and chverted for 
 a moment from her cynosure the Graf. She was 
 tempted to show off some of her schoolroom learn- 
 ing for the benefit of the shabby, semi-crazy student. 
 How and where did he get up all that nonsense ? 
 asked Fra. What weight did he put on people's 
 legends ? Had he ever read Max Mliller's books ? 
 (This was a smart misappropriation of works 
 only known by name to Fra.) For her part she 
 tliought it was great nonsense to trace the source 
 of a thing so cumbrous, and yet so clipped, as 
 a language. If she ever took up any study of the
 
 278 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 kiiidjslie would make niirseryrliymes her speciality, 
 and confine herself to it. There might be some- 
 thing in discovering the historical origin of 
 
 ' Three little kittens 
 That lost their mittens 
 And got no Christmas pie ;' 
 
 at least, historical parallels could be found — Jack 
 and Gill might stand for the first and the last 
 Napoleon, and Little Jack Horner for Bismarck. 
 
 (It need hardly be said that the first of Miss 
 Fra's parallels was lamentably halting, and the 
 second was not original.) 
 
 But TafT Penryn merely looked at her, and 
 then answered her literally, and rather briefly. 
 
 He supposed that she was laughing at him, 
 wdiich was true, only he did not understand that 
 this was a mark of condescension and honour on 
 Era's part, and that he ought to have protested 
 and argued, laughed back again, and prolonged 
 the game. He did not mind being laughed at ; 
 but while he was very fond of children — he really 
 did not care greatly for girls — unless friendly, 
 sisterly girls, and even they were sometimes a little 
 silly and stupid, without much information or 
 common sense. He could not have flirted though 
 he had tried ; he had had more to do in the past, 
 he had a world more to do in the future. 
 
 He could play — he had been in the full swing 
 of play a moment before ; but it was much the sort 
 of game which he woidd have maintained with a 
 party of fellow-students; he had no special game
 
 BY THE ELBE. 279 
 
 for women, and that might miply a defect in the 
 young man's composition. 
 
 As to playing with love, he would as soon have 
 played witli the arcana of perpetual motion. Besides 
 his ideal of womanhood did not find its reahsation 
 in immaturity and ignorance, though he saw that 
 Fra Carteret was very pretty, and he heard that 
 she had a glib, jibing tongue, amusing enough to 
 those who relished and kept themselves disengaged 
 for such amusements. 
 
 But for Taff Penryn there was little attraction 
 — however perfect tlie beauty might be in form and 
 colouring — in a toy, or an elf, or a barber's block. 
 He thought — when dim, vague visions, which he 
 sought instinctively to drive away, flashed across 
 his mind — of a woman ' divinely tall and most 
 divinely fair,' not so much in physical as in 
 spiritual stature. She might be as small as a 
 fairy in body, even irregular in feature, or sallow 
 in complexion, for aught Tafi" Penryn cared, if she 
 were only large in soul — a wise, generous, benefi- 
 cent creature — fallible, else she must have mated 
 w^ith an angel — but having something great, even 
 in her errors, which ought to lean to virtue's side, 
 and with her greatness summed up in the most 
 essential — the crownino- cliarm of transcendent 
 modesty. 
 
 What most distant resemblance to TalTPenryu's 
 heroine existed in nine-tenths of the heroines of 
 the day ? It did not exist in Fra Carteret, with
 
 280 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 her slenderness and prettiness, her Anglo-Chinese 
 deformities of tiny hands and feet, her snpreme 
 accomphshnients in her own eyes, which yet ad- 
 mitted of their possessor being an utterly inex- 
 perienced, ill-informed girl. These accomplishments 
 had about the same relation to her mind as the 
 streamers and bead garniture, with which she was 
 fond of adorning herself, had to the main body of 
 her dress. Fra was another order of being in her 
 sharpness and selfishness, her mixture of bouncing 
 and bridling, her causeless, soulless fits of glee, and 
 her equally empty and petty bouts of gloom. 
 
 After Fra, Lyd was nobody, and the poor little 
 Baroness only struck TafF Penryn with a tender 
 sentiment of pity, which he should have liked to 
 express by chivalrous regard for her comfort and 
 pleasure — only she seemed much to prefer the 
 attentions of the Graf, her cousin. The nearest 
 approach to Taff Penryn's heroine was made by 
 Mary Carteret, who came across him consciously 
 tliis day — ju=t as she had come across him un- 
 consciously more than once before — with a sense 
 of womanly charm. 
 
 He saw so far that she was a fair young woman, 
 and not a pretty girl. He would not have ob- 
 jected to knowing her better, and coming to 
 confide in her, for he felt abstractedly that she 
 might have suited him better than any one of the 
 sisterly friends he could claim. But she was an 
 English girl of the rank of a squire's daughter,
 
 BY THE ELBE. 281 
 
 like the other two. JSTo doubt, though she could 
 use her eyes and ears, had read and thought a 
 little for herself, entertained, at least, a passing- 
 concern for her fellows in the shape of the rafts- 
 men, and seemed to be her father's companion, 
 and not simply his pet or plaything, her thoughts 
 were like tliose of her kind. Her ideas were con- 
 fined to gesthetics, if not to bodily ease and 
 luxury, to a little condescending casting of her 
 crumbs to the Lazarusesat her door, in the pauses 
 of seeking a sultan — the provider of a suitable 
 establishment in town and country houses, parks 
 and gardens, carriages and servants — instead of a 
 mate with whom to toil, and to whom to minister. 
 
 Fra's few overtures to TafT Penryn came 
 to a summary conclusion, and left her free to 
 complain pettishly to Mary when the sisters were 
 left beliind for a moment. ' I wonder what can 
 possess papa to inflict on us that horrid, slovenly, 
 boorish, cracked fellow, though he were ten times 
 an old neighbour's son. I quite wonder that the 
 Graf Von Felsberg (Fra, like the Vicar of Wake- 
 field, loved to be particular with titles, though she 
 too had danced at a Lord Lieutenant's ball) sub- 
 mits to the association.' 
 
 Mary had to call Fra back, and ask wherein 
 lay the slovenliness and boorishness of Mr. Penryn, 
 to whom they were all indebted for lightening the 
 way. 
 
 ' Murray or Baedeker would have done as well,'
 
 282 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 said Fra, holding up a red volume derisively. ' They 
 have the most of his precious fables, and we don't 
 have to ask them to sail and lunch and dine with 
 lis — not that the prince of publishers, Lord Byron's 
 John Murray, would not have been good company. 
 Don't you see there is a great orange smudge on 
 one of his hands ? and he proposed to keep his 
 knife and fork throughout luncheon.' 
 
 ' The last was because he saw there was no 
 change at hand, and he did not wish to give trouble 
 or hurt the feelings of the people at the restaurant. 
 Don't you notice how civil he and other foreigners 
 are in such circumstances ? Indeed, Fra, I think it 
 is we who should take a lesson in civility. The 
 Germans show real consideration for hosts and 
 waiters and chambermaids. Didn't you observe 
 that the Baroness and the Graf acted in the very 
 manner of which you complain ? ' 
 
 'I wonder they could,' said Fra, candidly ; 'but 
 at least they have not smudges on their hands, and 
 they do not wear coats that one is ashamed to be 
 seen speaking to in a Speise Saal oi a steamboat.' 
 
 ' I don't speak to a coat, Fra ; and more than 
 that, I don't think you had any particular objection to 
 speak to the wearer of the coat on the lull a minute 
 ago. As to the shabbmess, are we not all miser- 
 ably shabby contrasted with the wife and daughters 
 of the great London salesman, distancing all 
 competitors in costliness of di^ess and equipage in 
 Dresden, this spring ? The shabbiest of us all is
 
 BY THE ELBE. liSo 
 
 Baroness Gisela. I should not have spoken of it 
 had not you introduced the subject,' said Mary, 
 demurely. ' However, there is no shutting our eyes 
 to the fact. Her house gown — you known how near 
 it is to the bones, Fra — is a thousand times better 
 than this meagre attempt at a smart travelling 
 dress. I am surprised that Madame Marck could 
 send her niece abroad hke this.' 
 
 ' Oh, Madame Marck knows that the Baroness 
 may wear anything,' said Fra, taking high ground ; 
 ' and Gisela is a darling. I'm sure I don't mind 
 what she wears ' 
 
 ' No more do I, Fra,' said Mary ; ' but may not 
 a Baroness set a fashion, or must it only be for 
 people of high degree, hke herself? And would 
 you not have minded, though you had been forced 
 to take a journey in company with Baron Von 
 Liebig, and he had presented all the colours in the' 
 rainbow printed on his hands ? ' 
 
 ' Don't talk nonsense, Polly. Liebig indeed ! 
 who gave us ready-made beef-tea, and a lunatic, 
 believhig in the Ehxir of Life, or what is it?' 
 
 The idea of Taff Penryn's quixotic faith had a 
 totally different effect on the two sisters — in Mary 
 it excited lively interest, a certain amount of 
 yearning sympathy and wonder, not untinged with 
 awe ; in Fra it produced utter contempt. 
 
 ' If Taff Penryn obtain the water of life, and 
 revel in perpetual youtli, his coat will become of
 
 284 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 little consequence, even to you, Fra, when you are 
 faded and failing,' said Mary. 
 
 ' Oh ! I am a long way from that yet,' said 
 Fra, with one of her notes of exultation ; I am not 
 major for months to come.' 
 
 'I think you might wish to shorten them,' 
 said Mary. ' It is true that few women's majorities 
 introduce them to a foretaste of power. But to 
 think that a woman should not long for any sign 
 of her womanhood, that she should hold back from 
 it, and desire rather to remain indefinitely in the 
 unripeness, even if it be sweet and full of promise, 
 of her girlhood ! Fancy a lad wlio never panted 
 to be a man, but craved to be a perpetual hob- 
 ble-de-hoy ! ' 
 
 ' Oh ! but you know, Mary, they are detestable 
 ■ — not hke girls. And remember there are such 
 things as sour plums, dear, and foxes tliat have 
 lost their tails. And pray don't mount your stilts 
 climbing the Bastei ; it might be dangerous, when, 
 anyhow, one nmst mind one's feet.' 
 
 When Mary and Fra rejoined the rest of the 
 party, they were high enough among the woods 
 and rocks to command grand points of view — 
 one of them including the fine old Schloss 
 Hohenstein, converted into a reformatory. 
 
 They were close on a haunt of the Eobber 
 Knights, the pest of mediaeval Germany. Taff 
 Penryn took pains to search out and make plain 
 the different traces of them in the locahty, the
 
 BY THE ELBE. 285 
 
 marks where tlieir drawbridi^e had been himo- 
 and their gates had been shmg, and tlie narrow, 
 frightfully steep steps up the precipice, by which 
 the marauders had borne their booty to their rude 
 castle or burg on an isolated rock. That burq 
 had possessed two unsurpassable advantages — it 
 had been totally inaccessible to the pursuers of 
 these days, the moment the drawbridge was re- 
 moved, and it had commanded a far stretch of the 
 only road, with a great reach of the river. JSTo 
 band of soldiers in the pay of emperor or elector 
 could steal up to surprise and slay the human 
 wolves in their lair; no barge conveying hapless 
 traveller or wary merchant, not even an abbot or a 
 friar brandishing the terrors of excommunication, 
 could venture into these waters without beinc'- 
 pounced upon, stripped, kidnapped, and compelled 
 to taste the robbers' rough fare, until a ransom was 
 forthcomincr. 
 
 As the nineteenth-century visitors to the old 
 scene of lawless might and bootless terror were 
 peering down into the wooded gulphs — all one 
 dusky, pine-tree green, though the season was 
 spring — and craning their necks and straining their 
 eyes to look up at the dark waving crest of the 
 rock, which, after ail, was more like an eagle's nest 
 than a wolf's lair, the Grafs eyes glittered with 
 m.uch the same envy that they had held for the 
 inscriptions on the rock. 
 
 Mary also was smitten with a high vaulting
 
 28G BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ambition. She had been reading with her father 
 lately various accounts of the tremendous exploits 
 accomplished, the hairbreadth escapes effected, 
 and at last the awful penalties suffered by these 
 Eobber Knights. The narratives of plundered, 
 murdered victims, and abducted damsels, with 
 the final retribution as withering and wasting as 
 anything which had gone before it, had made a 
 lively impression on Mary's mind. She desired to 
 communicate that impression in the face of the 
 den where such trao;edies had been wrouofht out. 
 She was prompted to enter the lists as a story 
 teller with Taff Penryn, who, like a courteous 
 rival, when he saw what she intended, stood aside 
 and gave her the lead. 
 
 She felt rather shaky about her dates, and was 
 dubious whether she might not commit murder 
 on her own account, on proper names. But it w^as 
 not dates or names that she wished to share with 
 her companions — it was the vivid tale of doughty 
 deeds and cruel wrongs — cruelly avenged, com- 
 bined with those elements of merry humour and 
 tender pity, without which such records lose their 
 charm for all save the savage in heart, in their 
 trenchant ferocity and unrelieved gloom. 
 
 Fra was the most impatient of Mary's listeners, 
 but even Fra could not in that place choose but 
 listen. 
 
 Lyd shuddered and drew in her breath, came 
 nearer to Mary, and bade her go on, as she had
 
 BY THE ELBE. 287 
 
 clamoured to her to tell some too enticing fiction 
 of the Babes of the Wood or Eed Eiding Hood 
 in the days when Lyd's five fitted well into Mary's 
 twelve years. 
 
 Gisela was still more moved ; for were not 
 these stories among the legends of her cradle? 
 only she had never heard them told before with 
 such life-like vivacity and infectious enthusiasm. 
 The puzzling circumstange was that it was the 
 eldest Miss Carteret whom Gisela — taking Mary 
 at Fra and Lyd's word — had been accustomed to 
 regard as so old^ — somehow, stiff and proper, 
 and to avoid accordingly, who indulged with all her 
 heart in incidents Avith regard to which Gisela her- 
 self had always cherished an instinctive perception 
 that they were a great deal too romantic — though 
 they had really happened, once upon a time — to be 
 imparted to Fra and Lyd. Why, if the party 
 had not been standing in the scene of some of 
 the events, and if they had not been so pithily 
 given by Miss Carteret, Fra and Lyd would have 
 laughed them down as ' tall old-world bosh,' too 
 improbable, and, supposing they were true, mere 
 raw-head-and-bloody-bone details, with which the 
 girls were happy to say they had nothing to do. 
 
 The Graf stood as one spell-bound. Here was 
 another marvellous speaker, and, as it happened, 
 on matters which the Graf could not only 
 understand, but which stirred his Graf's nature 
 to its very depths. Mary saw him thrusting 
 about his yellow hair, where another man would
 
 288 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 have pulled bis moustaclie, and felt his fascinated 
 blue eyes dwelling upon her, without any sense 
 of danger, with only a comical recollection. 'He 
 will inevitably cry, ^'■Donner unci Blitz .^" appalled 
 both by ray length of tongue and my strength of 
 memory. He Avill compare the result in my case 
 also to a book, only not so miihsam.' 
 
 When Mary had finished — feeling a shade of 
 shame for her performance, though, in reality, she 
 had simply shown, without premeditation, some 
 amount of a rare, and growing rarer, enviable 
 faculty — the fine gift of conversation and the 
 capacity of story-telling — she was impelled to say 
 to Taff Penryn, ' It was very good of you to 
 overlook my offences in dates and names just 
 now. I am conscious that I must have tried your 
 patience.' 
 
 ' No, no,' he said, cordially ; ' it was a case 
 where great accuracy was not called for ; and I 
 could not have set you right more than once or 
 twice. You told the stories very well for an 
 Endishwoman.' 
 
 ' But you are an Englishman,' she retorted 
 quickly, with a faint sensation of pain, she could 
 not have told why, caused by his words. 
 
 'I!' he exclaimed with a smile — 'I am a 
 citizen of the world ; and, for anything more, I 
 should say I belong to Germany.' 
 
 The rest of the party's progress — fortunately 
 they were near the top — was spoiled to Mary by
 
 BY THE ELBE. 289 
 
 tlie Graf. Whether piqued by the sight of these 
 crow-steps in the rock, which the Eobber Knights 
 had mounted in their raids, and on wiiich farther 
 light had been throv/n by Mary's narratives, he 
 began to use, or rather abuse, his long legs, in 
 order to get into various situations of difficulty 
 and danger, even to the extent of abandoning, 
 for their sake, the authorised road to the summit. 
 And the worst of it was that he served as an 
 evil example to Fra, Avho sprang off, scrambling 
 like a kid, without a kid's sureness of foot ; while 
 Lyd and the Baroness — their breath already short 
 and their feet stumbling — toiled in the wake of 
 the first two, like stray sheep. 
 
 ' I am not such an old woman as you, Polly, 
 and some otlier people whom I don't choose to 
 mention,' called back Fra defiantly. 
 
 The last shot was fired at TalF Penryu, who 
 was w^alking along quietly in the right path. 
 
 ' Does the zest of danger free you from all re- 
 sponsibihty ? Look where you are going, and who 
 are following you,' entreated Mary. 
 
 ' Shall I follow the children and look after 
 them?' suggested Tall Penryn, still gaily, to 
 encourage Mary ; and when he who knew the 
 ground kept the others in sight, and shouted out 
 counsels, and warnings to them in time, Mary was 
 comforted. At the same time her imao;ination 
 was tickled with the wrath which Fra, not to say 
 the Graf, would feel if they heard the term 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 children applied to them ; for, though Fra hugged 
 her girlhood, she had absolutely renounced her 
 childhood. She was even annoyed and offended 
 by being occasionally classed in the category to 
 which her mind and manners answered fully — 
 that of a half-formed, giddy, not very well-bred 
 schoolgirl. 
 
 Mary continued to think over the subject as 
 she scaled what was left of the ascent with a foot 
 which could distance Fra's by miles when there 
 was no excitement of a race, no stimulus of op- 
 position, only the healthful, commonplace attrac- 
 tions of some country road — along which Fra 
 would scour, indeed, till she suddenly collapsed 
 in diso:ust, and retreated to stretch her slender 
 frame on a sofa, and shut herself up in her 
 humours, or in a book, which all the time she 
 would loudly proclaim was not worth reading. 
 ' Danger for danger's sake,' said Mary to herself 
 ' I suppose there is merit of a manly kind in it ; and 
 it is certainly one of the chief fascinations in these 
 stories, which I was so left to myself as to repeat. 
 In addition, one often recognises the passion for 
 encountering and overcoming dangers as prevaihng 
 in really fine characters. But it must be taken with 
 reservation, else it becomes an irreverent folly, 
 little less hideous than that of self-martyrdom.' 
 
 At last Mary reached the top ; but, alas ! there 
 was no solitary height from which to feel one's 
 own littleness in looking down in peace on the
 
 BY THE ELBE. 291 
 
 forest trees transformed to so many stalks of club 
 moss, with the river dwindled to a thread. 
 
 There was a Restauration, a wooden house 
 fitted up wdth tables, chairs, and a balustrade, 
 all complete, like that below. In a shed, early 
 as the season was, there was a band of musicians 
 discoursing music, certainly noisy, though Mary 
 Avas willing to concede it might be good of its 
 kind, particularly as Fra and Lyd, who had elected 
 tliemselves musical judges, pronounced it unex- 
 ceptional, and declared themselves enchanted with 
 the sudden effect at the crisis. 
 
 Mary was driven to speculate on different 
 spheres of fastidiousness ; to ask herself how" and 
 why it was that the girls who could not forgive 
 the sing;le knife and fork relei^ated to each at the 
 morning's luncheon, relished the music which 
 offended Mary on the breezy summit of tlie 
 Bastei. She had not disliked, but had enjoyed 
 what Fra and Lyd had groaned over — the cir- 
 cumstance of two young men, w^ho. sat, their 
 hats crowned with green, by the wayside, and 
 woke the woods with their deep, rough voices. 
 It was the old story of the fitness of things, 
 which Fra and Lyd as girls refused, in a general 
 sense, to take into consideration. 
 
 At first Mary thought, as she tried to shut 
 her ears, and make out the great rocks — the luige 
 Lilienstein, at this point like a mighty wall, the 
 rock fortress of Konigstein, the Pfaffenstein, and 
 
 V 2
 
 292 BY THE EL13K. 
 
 more steins than either her eyes or mind could 
 take in, in the shoreless ocean of forest green, 
 and which the regular guide was at that moment 
 naming to Mr. Carteret — that nobody save her 
 ftither, who was knitting his brows in a manner 
 perfectly comprehensible to Mary, sympathised 
 with her in the plague of the brass band. 
 
 To be sure, Mrs. Carteret, who had made a 
 futile essay to buy white bread to be carried 
 down to the Erbgericlit Haus by the Elbe, re- 
 marked, with sarcasm in her voice, ' Fiddles 
 instead of a common wh eaten loaf! ' 
 
 But the remainder of the party had seated 
 
 themselves among some other wayfarers before 
 
 the little tables, to rest and be regaled at once by 
 
 the sweet huchen^ the strong coffee, the sharp 
 
 Ehenish wine, and the sensational airs from 
 
 Meyerbeer. The Graf was even so elated as to 
 
 make use of one of his scanty English words, 
 
 'jolly,' which he pronounced like the French 
 
 equivalent for pretty ; and to express in addition 
 
 a tndy English sentiment, ' that one might kill a 
 
 little time up here.' 
 
 Mary could not know that TafF Penryn either 
 penetrated or had any part in her momentary 
 chaoTin. lie was arching; his evebrows and 
 shrugging his shoulders, muttering his own pro- 
 test, 'Kill time at liis age, with so much before 
 him, so much to do, and when my moments are 
 by far too few, though I count them up and hoard
 
 BY THE ELBE. 293 
 
 them as no miser hoards his gold ! Why camiot 
 he lend me this time which he treats as a mortal 
 enemy, a vile criminal and scourge to society, were 
 it only that I might take with it the necessary 
 recreation which wiseacres and learned physicians 
 declare is to prevent me from dying of brain 
 disease and nervous exhaustion before I am thirty, 
 or, what is infinitely harder, before my work is 
 well begun ? ' 
 
 This murmur, the gist of which Mary could just 
 guess, had no reference to her small trouble ; and 
 it was only when TafT Penryn looked round at 
 her, and said aloud, with some pleasantry in his 
 manner, ' There is a plague of popularity for 
 places as well as for persons ; don't you think 
 so. Miss Carteret ? ' that she saw he understood 
 her disturbance. She wondered for a moment 
 whether, if he ever succeeded in doing — not the 
 impossible, but something which no other man 
 had done — and conferred a widespread benefit 
 on the human race, would he be spoilt by sliort- 
 sighted favour in the room of wholesome ne^flect, 
 to the loss of his simplicity and earnestness?
 
 294 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE RULING PASSION. 
 
 The descent of the Bastei was a comparatively easy 
 matter, but it cost the party the Graf, to the extreme 
 mortification of two, and tlie misery of one, of the 
 younger girls. He loitered and loitered behind 
 the others, and vanished altogether long before 
 the travellers reached the green field, in which 
 several buxom Saxon lasses, in the invariable 
 kerchief over the head, jacket, short petticoats, 
 and with bare feet, were seen hoeing, and staring 
 at the strangers, and w^ere proudly pointed out 
 by the agile old guide proper, as belonging to 
 his twelve grandchildren. 
 
 At dinner no eagerly-looked-for Graf appeared, 
 though the meal would have rewarded his exer- 
 tions had he put them in practice. The resources 
 of the house had been drawn forth in the absence 
 of the party, and, so that one did not mind the 
 order in which the entertainment was served, as 
 Mrs. Carteret was too prone to do, or enquire over 
 narrowly into the ingredients of hier sii/ppe, hdring 
 cm/a^,and leberwurste,t\\e feast was not discreditable
 
 BY THE ELBE. 205 
 
 to the cooks, or unrelished by the guests, unless 
 where the absence of the Graf had bereft them of 
 appetite. No doubt it had robbed the whole 
 company, in the eyes of the onlookers, of the eclat 
 which had attended it since its setting forth. 
 
 And still no Graf turned up on the terrace, 
 where his fellow-pleasure-seekers disconsolately 
 lingered, eating their last year's apples, sipping 
 tlieir coffee or their Avine — the last out of tall, slim 
 glasses, like that which Eembrandt flourishes in 
 one of his portraits — watclhng the afternoon 
 shadow^s grow longer and longer on the Elbe, 
 wdiich had so far to go. 
 
 Wlien the boat came, Mr. Carteret, in accord- 
 ance with his declared intention, stoutly resisting 
 all entreaties and petitions from Fra and Lyd, set 
 sail with the remaining members of the party. 
 
 Mary had to do what she could to console the 
 Baroness, since Fra and Lyd were too depressed 
 on their own account, and too much given to yield 
 to their feehngs, to seek to cheer their companion. 
 They subsided on the most comfortable of the 
 benches, half closing their eyes, and refusing to 
 look any longer at the river scenery, while they 
 did not forget to arrange their veils to guard their 
 complexions jealously from anything so little for- 
 midable as a spring afternoon sun. Mary laughed, 
 and scolded them a little, but she could not help 
 j^itying poor little Gisela's real distress, her twitch- 
 ing hands and trembling lips.
 
 2l)G BY THE ELEE. 
 
 ' lie is a man and a German,' said Mary, en- 
 couragingly, ' besides being a Graf; he will not be 
 mucli put about by losing his way, or by being 
 detained for a night. It is a pity, of course, be- 
 cause, very likely, we shall have to leave Schandau 
 early, and he may not come up with us till we 
 are at IIerrnskretschen,on our way back. Still, you 
 may depend upon it that we have remained long 
 enough to hear if there had been really anything 
 wrong. My father would not have left, if it had 
 not been so. You know the Ilerr Graf is^a 
 little — a little capricious, and uncertain in his 
 movements.' 
 
 ' I know,' said Gisela, meekly, ' and I am very 
 vexed that he should try people — English people 
 especially — by his what you call eccentric ways.' 
 
 ' We are so eccentric ourselves that you need 
 not mind.' 
 
 That was not what the Baroness was mindino-. 
 
 ' I did fear that he was hankering after these 
 names which foolish persons have engraven on 
 the rocks ; that he did mean to break away and 
 write his name the highest of ail, since he could 
 no longer hope to turn Scliloss Felsberg into a 
 Eobber Knight's hold,' finished Gisela, with a faint 
 smile, soon quenclied in a mist of imshed tears. 
 
 ' I am sorry that I was so silly as to recall 
 these stories,' said Mary. 
 
 ' Oil, that did nothing — nothing at all,' hastily 
 interposed Gisela, with what Mary judged was
 
 BY THE ELBE. 297 
 
 some jealousy lest the Graflf's intellectual powers 
 were not sufficiently acknowledged — perhaps also 
 with a little impatience at Mary's having the pre- 
 sumption to imagine that she had influenced him. 
 ' He knew all these stories, every one, already, and 
 hearinof them a";ain could not cause him to be more 
 anxious to outstrip his neighbours in some trial 
 that w^as still open to him. He is proud, yes, 
 naturally ; and he is very brave and daring, like 
 one of the old Knights,' said Gisela, with sparkling 
 eyes. ' But what is there left for him to do, since 
 there are neither men, women, nor goods to be 
 carried away or to be set free ? — my cousin would 
 have played the deliverer well, for he has the good 
 heart — oh, the kindest, the truest heart in the 
 world ! — and since prejudice — yes, I say that. Miss 
 Carteret — and rivalry, and punctilio prevented 
 poor Fritz's little faults being overlooked in the 
 army, into which he sliould have entered and be- 
 come a hero m our glorious war. He is very like 
 my blessed Hugo ; only my dear brother was poor, 
 and had a thousand things to fight with in his 
 rank, which could never, never come near a Graf 
 Von Felsberg.' 
 
 Mary had difficulty in imagining a poor Graf 
 VonFelsberg equally exempt from criticism, equally 
 Avasted by ill-considered notice and applause. She 
 gave up the attempt, and said, ' Don't you think 
 it is most probable, after all, tliat the Graf Von 
 Felsberg has found us stupid, and tired of us, and
 
 298 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 lias exercised his independence, as he had quite a 
 right to do, in withdrawing himself from us alto- 
 gether ? You know he did not belong to our party 
 as it was planned, and he never promised to con- 
 tinue with us and see us through the excursion,' 
 
 ' Ach^ nein ! ' said Gisela, with some emphasis, 
 ' the Graf was pledged to nothing ; but he is not 
 changeable, no, no. He has been the most faithful 
 of cousins. Do you see that poor little watch he 
 wears still ? That was given to him by my mother 
 at the time that she did give one the same to my 
 Hugo, They were boys together, and they were 
 so handsome, so manly ! Fritz was much at 
 our Schloss then. He was the motherless little 
 fellow in those days, and was dear to my mother, who 
 was his mother's sister. The sisters were married 
 very differently,' explained Gisela, entering into the 
 details con amore, and speaking with proud hu- 
 mility ; 'so you would say, 77iein Fraulein, if you 
 saw the Schloss Felsberg or any of his other 
 sittings — see, I cannot count them with the fin- 
 gers of one hand — and our poor little old ruinous 
 barn of a Schloss Eudener, But he had need of 
 my mother — she was good to him, and he has 
 never forgotten it.' 
 
 Mary admitted willingly that the Graf's own 
 peculiar faculty of memory was in itself admirable ; 
 and she suppressed as ungracious the next obser- 
 vation which rose to her lips — that he might ex-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 209 
 
 press his constant remembrance in a more appro- 
 priate and practical manner. 
 
 The scenery was still perfect of its kind, 
 especially about the quaint little town- and im- 
 pregnable castle of Konigstein, with its flavour of 
 much drilling, and which has acres within its 
 natural enclosure, so that green tree tops wave 
 over its battlements and cows are said to pasture 
 behind the ramparts, while it owns an inex- 
 haustible ice-cold well and keeps provisions in its 
 store-rooms to last for twice twelve months. No 
 wonder it becomes the refuge of Saxon kings in 
 their extremity, and the hiding-place of the 
 Aladdin's lamp treasures of the Green Vaults. 
 
 Unhke her sisters and Gisela, Mary was quite 
 able to look up and enjoy Konigstein, and to hear 
 her father's explanation of the place, since she had 
 ceased to have any other cicerone. 
 
 The Graf's was not the sole desertion from 
 their band, though the second was less palpable 
 and more in the spirit than in the body. TafF 
 Penryn's person was still among them, or at least 
 only so far removed from them as was implied by 
 the other extremity of the boat, where he sat with 
 his back half tm-ned towards them, in deep dis- 
 cussion with a tall, spare, bent old man, whom he 
 had detected, and hailed with unbounded dchght 
 on their coming on board. He had already an- 
 nounced, breathlessly and triumphantly, that he 
 had been so fortunate as to encounter one of the
 
 300 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 most notable chemists of the day, with whom lie 
 had formed a slight acquaintance, and who had 
 been pleased to approve of his first steps in 
 science. 
 
 TafF Penryn oflered, with perceptible half- 
 boyish reluctance, to introduce Mr. Carteret to his 
 authority, an introduction which would no doubt 
 have interfered with the confidential communica- 
 tion that had straightway been entered into be- 
 tween master and scholar. 
 
 But Mr. Carteret had declined, explaining his 
 relinquishment of the opportunity of being pre- 
 sented to Herr Monch to Mary, afterwards. He 
 said it had made him sick to see the change 
 in TafF Penryn's face, and he could not rid 
 himself of the illiberality of the conclusion that 
 this skin-diied mummy of a chemist was, for 
 some motive of his own, aiding and abetting the 
 fellow in his inexplicable hallucination. 
 
 ' It is rather humiliating to have our company 
 fall to pieces like this before the end of our first 
 day,' said Mary to her father. ' It does not signify 
 much that these gentlemen's presence was not of 
 our seeking, or was a generous concession on our 
 part to begin w^ith. After they were here it 
 became a point of honour with us that they 
 should not seek to be elsewhere. Don't you pity 
 us poor young women, papa, since the defaulters 
 happen to be young men.^ Their thus, in turn, 
 " bolting " — I can call it by no other name — casts
 
 BY THE ELBE. 301 
 
 a special stigma on our combined charms, or lack 
 of charms.' 
 
 But Mr. Carteret ^vould neither pity nor rally 
 Mary on the defection. ' For Heaven's sake, don't 
 speak to Penryn — he seems friendly with you — on 
 the subject of his folly,' he enjoined on Mary. ' I 
 can see discussion only confirms him in it.' 
 
 ' Just once, papa,' entreated Mary. ' I should 
 like to ask him one question, if you please ; but I 
 am afraid that 1 shall never have the opportunity^ 
 I don't think Mr. Penryn will care to enter on his 
 experiments and the hopes of his life to me.' 
 
 The fact was that Mary burnt with curiosity 
 to put her one question, and to hear how it would 
 be answered. The opportunity was not so remote 
 as she had imagined ; on the contrary, it presented 
 itself that very evening. It occurred Avhen they 
 had sailed farther and were nearing their destina- 
 tion, when the Lilienstein, which had become the 
 great landmailv, after having been lost to view for 
 a time had again drawn in sight. The rock was 
 looming behind the voyager like an extinct volcano 
 in the evening sky — the rosy red of which was fast 
 paling to saffron, and to a dehcate apricot colour, 
 melting by subtle shades of dimmest sea green into 
 turquoise blue. And Taff Penryn had torn himself 
 away from his master, and come up, with a shadow 
 of self-reproach on his fiice, to Mary. 
 
 ' That is the Porst Haus, Miss Carteret ' — he 
 pointed out the largest building in the line of
 
 o 
 
 02 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 rustic hotels, ^yith terraces and gardens by the 
 water — ' you will like it for a resting-place. Was 
 not Konigstein a fortress to be scaled ? 1 hope 
 that you and Mr. Carteret have been having a 
 pleasant time. I wish that I could have been of 
 more use to you in the latter part of the sail, but 
 there are chances which cannot be let slip. When 
 a man is engaged on an arduous enterprise, he 
 must seize every accidental advantage, he must 
 bring every passing occurrence to bear on his 
 life-long labour— he must lay aside ceremony' 
 • — Taff Penryn did not pretend to say happiness, 
 or even inclination, as well as ceremony — ' if he is 
 ever to lessen the immense odds against him and 
 reach his goal.' 
 
 TafF Penryn spoke warmly, and yet with a 
 degree of restraint in the intense earnestness of 
 his vain pursuit, while a dusky colour rose in his 
 brown cheek, and a warm glow awoke in his fixed 
 far-seeing eyes. 
 
 ' You mean in the spirit of the Bible verse 
 which bids a man train himself, as for the Greek 
 games, and cast aside while he runs, every weight 
 that may hnpede his progress,' said Mary, softly. 
 
 He nodded, and smiled brightly, as on receiv- 
 ing encouragement, which was rare to him. 
 
 ' Mr. Penryn, will you tell me,' said Mary, ex- 
 cited herself, as she laid hold of the opening, ' how 
 are you able to contemplate any force so strange 
 and so unlike the present order of things as per-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 303 
 
 petual motion ? When I seek to see it at work in 
 the Avorkl, it is as when I try to fancy what 
 Heaven will be like — I cannot compass it — I feel 
 that I must be there myself before I can imagine 
 it. I have to fall back on the " eye hath not seen 
 and ear hath not heard," to console myself for my 
 incapacity.' 
 
 ' That is it,' said Taff Penryn, with passion, 
 still repressed, yet thrilling through every feature 
 of his face and tone of his voice. ' And you be- 
 lieve in Heaven not the less. I cannot see the 
 working of perpetual motion on earth, I only 
 know how much it is wanted. I can only measure 
 the fatal waste of human resource and energy, 
 that goes to the renewing of what ought to be 
 self-existent, self-productive, and wliich baffles 
 all real progress. Think of the incalculable ad- 
 vance that woidd be made in every field of human 
 labour, if man's strength and skill were set free 
 to direct and control motion, not to create it 
 afresh with every rising of the sun ! Then, indeed, 
 discovery and invention would march on to 
 supreme victory, and the wilderness and the soli- 
 tary place would blossom as the rose.' 
 
 Mary was silent, looking at him in dumb doubt 
 and admiration. 
 
 He continued to answer her unspoken objec- 
 tion : ' It is not as if the principle had no founda- 
 tion. Perpetual motion does exist in the planetary 
 bodies. You may say it is God's prerogative ;
 
 304 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 but He made man in his image, and who shall 
 dare to limit his sovereign gifts ? Men, or the 
 devil in them, are craven-hearted ; they have 
 begun by doubting the possibility of every attain- 
 ment which they have ever mastered. How 
 should a navigator find a new world ? It was a 
 blasphemous presumption to sail on through an 
 unknown sea. How should an astronomer learn 
 that the sun stood still and tlie earth moved? 
 Would God tell the secret to him ? What drivel- 
 ling idiocy to say steam could ever sail a boat as 
 it is taking us straight up to that little pier before 
 us, or drive a carriac^e as it is brinofino: in the 
 trains yonder ! ' 
 
 Taff Penryn ended the conversation with a 
 disdainful laugh as he indicated first the landing- 
 place which they were approaching, and then the 
 railway that had actually arrived at the other side 
 of the river from Schandau. 
 
 The diminished, and for the most part dis- 
 pirited, party were fain to follow the never-failing 
 substantial sprite of a Kellner who appeared at the 
 steamboat's side, and beckoned, when there was 
 no language in common, the tired travellers to 
 their resting-place. 
 
 The Forst Haus, though it was a King's quarters 
 on his sporting expeditions, boasted nothing better 
 than wicker or plain deal chairs in its long, low 
 Speise Saal, the wooden floor of which was not 
 even parqueted. Nevertheless, with its wrought-
 
 BY TITE ELBE. 305 
 
 iron stove, in humble imitation of tlie canopy over 
 Quintin Matsy's well at Antwerp, and its pleasant 
 look out on the green trees of the terrace and the 
 river, it was not without an air of rustic refine- 
 ment. The sleeping-rooms liad tlie'w little beds 
 without curtains, while the sole bed-clothes con- 
 sisted of small down quilts. But the balconies 
 commanded grand views of the Elbe and the 
 wooded heights beyond. 
 
 Before Mary went to bed the young moon 
 streamed white on the water, and seemed to lend 
 light, not of the day, to such a mystic vision of 
 contests with, and conquest over, the untamed and 
 feebly guessed at powers which lie at the heart of 
 nature, as that wliicli Taff Penryn was bold enough 
 to hold. 
 
 But when Mary started up and looked out again 
 in the small hours, she found a surly grey sky, the 
 water rushing; down, ' ragged and brown,' and two 
 steamboats, like ugly phantom ]3oats, in the dim 
 chill dawn, hurrying to meet each other, as if for 
 mutual destruction, in a great crash, that would 
 forebode the final demolition of all man's boasted 
 machinery. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 30 G BY THE ELBE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE KUHSTALL. 
 
 The morning was better than it had given tokens 
 of, with slate-tinted clouds well up in th(? air and 
 fields of blue appearing between them. What 
 was still more to the purpose, everybody was re- 
 inspirited and inclined to cherish fresh hopes, 
 however widely divergent the foundations of the 
 hopes. 
 
 Mr. Carteret submitted to be introduced to 
 HeiT Monch, and freed him from the suspicion of 
 suborning TafT Penryn to his destruction. The 
 chemist was a reasonable man, who had no parti- 
 cular desire to carry his laboratory into the woods 
 with him. He would prefer, for his own solace, to 
 discuss the general news of the day with Mr. 
 Carteret, and even to concoct little jokes and 
 compliments, such as he was under the impressioi 
 women liked, to address to Mrs. Carteret and the 
 young ladies. 
 
 Under the circumstances, Mr. Carteret was 
 ready to beg Herr MiJnch to join the pending ex- 
 pedition to the Kuhstall, ns the arrangement which 
 might on the whole be tlie best conceived to keep 
 
 1
 
 BY THE ELBE. 307 
 
 him and Taff Penryn for that morning out of 
 mischief. 
 
 So much harmony was prevaihng that Fra, in 
 view of the fun of mountimij without a skirt on 
 a pony led by a horse-boy up a mountain side, 
 and in the recovered expectation of the tall ap- 
 parition of the Graf starting up before them at 
 any moment, forgot to complain once more of her 
 father's perverse taste. He had invited, on the 
 smallest pretext, an old man hke a superannuated 
 collector of taxes to join the part}^, and so added 
 a finishing touch of absurdity to what was already 
 their weak point in the shabby-coated, absent- 
 minded student who acted as their escort. If 
 only the Frau Grafin saw them and their sup- 
 porters ! But Fra flattered herself that the Frau 
 Griifiu was hundreds of miles away from behold- 
 ing the predicament of her dear young friends. 
 There was one exception to the harmony. Taff 
 Penryn was another man from what he had 
 been on the former morning. The fit of his 
 peculiar malady was upon him as Mary had never 
 seen it. He was restless, moody, and discontented 
 at the turn of events. He could not forgive Herr 
 Monch for abandoning the questions and answers 
 of scientific research to go out into the woods and 
 enjoy himself as the chemist was there to do ; and 
 though Taff Penryn himself was not without a notion 
 of the absolute necessity of such ungirding of the 
 loins of the mind and yielding it up, if it were 
 
 X 2
 
 o08 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 not past being yielded np, to sheer animal exhi- 
 laration. Bnt he was a unit in the party, and not 
 of so much consequence that his dissatisfaction 
 could mar its recovered pleasure. 
 
 The road up which the whole party drove, 
 lay by the cheerful little white lodging-houses 
 that nestled, some at the foot, some far up the 
 heights enclosing Schandau, which, from its great 
 natural beauty and accessibility by river and rail, 
 forms a popular summer resort. The way tra- 
 versed for six miles the Krisclmiss Thai, by its 
 Bach a clear mountain stream, with only an 
 occasional saw- mill and its tributary house or two 
 to break the solitude. It was seeing in miniature 
 and close at hand the scenery of the day before. 
 The pines were waving overhead, the grey rocks 
 were threatening to bar the path, and there at the 
 travellers' feet stretched a variegated carpet of wild 
 flowers — great tufts of white stellaria, a lilac flower 
 like Venus' looking-glass, a little yellow potentilla, 
 with patches of violets and pale blue myosotis. 
 
 The driver of the carriage pointed out an out- 
 line of an over-hanging rock resembling a man's 
 face, and called it a ' living head ;' and then he 
 drew attention to the spectacle of a fir-tree growing 
 out of a willow. 
 
 'We believe in that because we see it,' said 
 Taff Penryn, in what sounded sulky reproach ; 
 ' but if any man had anticipated such a trifle — 
 bah, for our faith ! '
 
 BY THE ELBE. 309 
 
 The end of the drive was indicated by one of 
 the never-failing Restaur ations, which in this case 
 purported to be in the express honour of a neigh- 
 bouring waterfall ; but that, alas ! was only 
 brought into active operation by a man's retiring 
 behind a rock and pulling a string, in the style of 
 a shower-bath, and was a mockery of the fresh, 
 wild nature in which it was supposed to play its 
 part. The little fountain in front of the house 
 was more excusable, and it had golden patches of 
 marsh-mallow in place of summer Tom Thumb 
 geraniums mingling with the ferns round its 
 brink. 
 
 A sturdy peasant was hired as a guide, and 
 troops of ponies, motley in colour and size, 
 were led forth by their respective grinning lads 
 and sober old men. Amidst some lauc-hter 
 ponies were mounted by the guds, who, 
 in their lack of skirts, their fluttering veils, 
 their attendant footmen, and their slow progress, 
 in a row — rendered compulsory by the nature of 
 the wood path, might have been taken either for 
 a procession of the middle ages, or for the women 
 connected with a modern hippodrome, just as 
 fancy inclined. 
 
 As the party had driven along each chance tra- 
 veller or stray tourist, in advance of the summer 
 mob, whom they had encountered, had greeted 
 them in a friendly f^ishion with a loud ' Guten Tag^ 
 or a lifted hat, which showed, as Fra said, antitheti-
 
 9 
 
 10 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 cally, that tliey were out of the poHte world. 
 'Now, on their fresh start, a rival party, descending 
 from the Kiihstall and passing our friends, w^ere 
 impelled to call out, in critical appreciation of 
 their array, in addition to the ' Guten Tag,' ' Sehr 
 gut gemacht.' 
 
 The cavalcade wound up through the wood, 
 enjoying its shade, its resinous odour, the crisp 
 rustle of the fallen fir spines, the subdued song of 
 the birds, and gathering meanwhile what informa- 
 tion the inquisitive among them could pick up, 
 according to their respective tastes, from the 
 country people surrounding them. 
 
 The Baroness and Lyd learnt that their ponies 
 were named respectively ' Hans ' and ' Liese,' and 
 that ' Hans ' had an uncertain temper, while 
 ' Liese ' was as good as gold, and were satisfied 
 with that information. 
 
 Fra discovered that the Kino; sometimes came 
 to hunt the many roes and the occasional stags, 
 and tliat he stayed on these occasions at the Forst 
 Haus, which filled her with satisfaction. She 
 made herself aware, further, that the royal 
 foresters wore green coats and a peculiar cap, 
 like the Jiiii^er in 'Der Freischutz.' 
 
 Mr. Carteret ascertained that the woods be- 
 longed almost entirely to the Saxon state, which 
 was one reason why so few castles were visible — 
 indeed, not one except Hohenstein existed within 
 three hours' journey. He never rested till he was
 
 BY THE ELBE. 311 
 
 master of all the guide could tell liim of the 
 staple wood trade of the country, how the trees 
 were cut down in the winter, in what manner 
 they were brought to the saw-mills, and Avhat 
 proportion of rafts fell to Magdeburg, to Ham- 
 burgh, and to Bremen. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret asked if there were many poor 
 in the district, and was told there were few on 
 the mountains, but many in the villages. Then 
 she commented severely on the heavy loads which 
 she saw the women carrying in the long wooden 
 baskets on their backs, and was much scandalised 
 when, her speech having been faithfully translated 
 to the guide, he only laughed, as if the burdens 
 which the women had been trained to bear, formed 
 so many feathers in the men's caps. 
 
 Mary was relieved to be iiiformed that the 
 women were allowed to come to the wood for 
 sticks, and could take all that fell of themselves, 
 to burn along with the coarse coal which was 
 brought up the Elbe. And she ratified her con- 
 viction that there were many blackbirds, thrushes, 
 and finches, though there were no nightingales in 
 these woods. 
 
 These gleanings were left for the English of 
 the party ; neither Herr Monch nor TafT Penryn, 
 who was tliree parts a German, found them 
 necessary. 
 
 The Kuhstall was heralded by another Re- 
 stauration^ wooden this time, and which stood,
 
 o 
 
 12 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 with its chairs and tables, at a considerable eleva- 
 tion in the middle of the wood. Guides, ponies, 
 and footmen fell into not unpictm^esque groups 
 about the brown ^\'ooden house, and among the 
 trees, as the dismounted sight-seers left them 
 behind, and turned a corner to confront the low, 
 solid stone arch of grass- tufted masonry forming 
 the entrance to the Kuhstall, which, as everyone wdio 
 has properly studied his 'Murray ' or 'Baedeker' 
 may know, gets its name from having been used 
 as a refuge for cattle as well as for women and chil- 
 dren in the Thirty Years' War, and again in the 
 first Xapol eon's wars. Eeyond the few feet of level 
 ground stretched a magnificent landscape — heights 
 and hollows, thickly clothed with dense dark fir 
 wood, for tlie most part interspersed with towering 
 masses and pinnacles of stone — more bii7-gs of 
 Eobber Knights — one had been in the Kuhstall 
 itself. Tlie Kleine Winterberg had the road to 
 it marked by a tender green strip of beechwood 
 among the pines ; a blue peak rising behind the 
 green, was Eosenstein, in Bohemia ; over all a 
 canopy of grim clouds descended lower and 
 lower. 
 
 The visitors were fain to linger and gaze, 
 and sketcli the rude arch, the entrance to the plat- 
 form which connnanded so wild a Avorld ; but 
 already the look of the sky was ominous, and 
 by the time the party had gathered in the antler- 
 liimg room of the Restauration previous to setting 
 fortli anew for tlie two Winterbergs and the Pre-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 313 
 
 bischthor, the rain began to fall. It Avas not a 
 dignified storm becoming a mountain, Fra railed ; 
 but a nasty little drizzle, which they might have 
 had in the Prager Strasse. It was yet quite suffi- 
 cient to blot out all save the nearest trees, and to 
 render proceeding farther as impossible as it would 
 have been useless. 
 
 The natives could give no hope of the 
 clouds clearing away within a period of hours; 
 there was nothing left for the company but to 
 get down the mountain as fast as they had got 
 up, and take refuge in the carriages which should 
 convey them back to Schandau. 
 
 Not for the Carterets and their companions 
 were either the Kleine or the Grosse Winterberg 
 — the latter twice the height of the Bastei, or the 
 Prebischthor — an enlarged and still grander ver- 
 sion of the Kuhstall ; or that loveliest village of 
 Herrnskretschen, with its whitewashed, black- 
 crossed, red-tiled houses among their feathery, 
 blossoming cherry-trees, nestling in a little gorge 
 at the foot of tlie wood-crowned rocks, and at 
 the mouth of its own bright thread of a Bach^ 
 where it falls, and is lost in the broad Elbe. 
 
 The travellers could not even hope for the 
 indulgence in the future except at a time 
 indefinitely remote, since Mr. Carteret, like all 
 men condemned to enforced idleness, felt an 
 urgent necessity not to prolong his holiday beyond 
 the three days set apart for it, and was already 
 anxious, in the middle of his enjoyment, to return
 
 314 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 to his confinement, and to the receipt of the 
 English letters, which he expected at this season. 
 As for Mrs. Carteret, she could not be answerable 
 for the conduct of nurse and James, Dorte and 
 Ursel, if left to their own devices a minute beyond 
 the stated space. 
 
 It was the cup snatched from the lips the 
 moment it was tasted ; and even Taff Penryn 
 roused himself from his own eno-rossing^ trouble 
 to condole with Mary on the relinquishment of 
 so much of their plan. But his condolences were 
 drowned in the jubilee wliich hailed the arrival 
 of the Graf, who converted the rain cloud for 
 only too brief a moment into brilliant sunshine 
 by walking upon the stage at a juncture which 
 might have been considered unpropitious — save, 
 indeed, that no juncture could be unpropitious for 
 the Graf. He looked, in his light shooting coat, 
 with his long-yellow hair tm-ned back beneath his 
 wide-awake, neither abashed for his offence, nor 
 huffy at the supposition of any offence committed 
 against himself. He had, on the contrary, a scarcely 
 suppressed air of proud consciousness and serene 
 congratulation, which Gisela immediately remarked, 
 and for which she challenged her cousin on the 
 spot. 
 
 ' Thou hast carved thy n;une on those rocks, 
 Fritz ; I know thou hast.' 
 
 Yes ; he had carved his name, the very 
 highest of all, and he flattered himself the letters
 
 BY THE ELBE. 315 
 
 would not be over-topped to-morrow or next 
 day. 
 
 ' Oh, liow couldst tlion, Fritz ? ' and ' How we 
 wish we could go back and read them,' Gisela and 
 Era and Lyd cried; while Mary said, almost 
 audibly, that she was thankful not the simplest 
 wayfaring man could mistake the title for that of 
 an Englishman. 
 
 One would have thought the Graf might 
 have been content with his accomplished feat, par- 
 ticularly when his condescending to go with the 
 multitude for what was left them of their excursion, 
 would have raised a feeling of the utmost delight 
 in soft bosoms. But no ; the perverse inclination to 
 proceed to the Kleine and the Grosse Winterberg, 
 to the Prebischthor, and to Herrnskretschen, in 
 such adverse circumstances as would have made 
 every other tourist turn back, and Avhich caused 
 even the guides to shake their weather-beaten 
 heads, Avas more than the Mad Graf could resist. He 
 stayed but to swallow a huge instalment of bread 
 and cheese and a long draught of beer, borrowed 
 a stout stick, buttoned up his coat, hired at a 
 triple fee the most adventurous of the guides, and 
 stepped out into the mist with as determined a 
 stride, to be drenched to the skin, to see nothing, 
 and to risk breaking his own and another's neck — 
 as if he had been climbing mountains to save lives 
 instead of to imperil them. 
 
 And all tlie time the Graf was leaving double 
 desolation beliind liim.
 
 316 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 Gisela liad to submit to fresh pangs of 
 anxiety on his account. No doubt he had returned 
 scatheless from the last adventure, and she saw 
 him depart with a guide, who, as he made the 
 venture for bread to fill his wife and children's 
 mouths, might be depended on as less foolhardy 
 than his leader ; but the little Baroness was never 
 reasonable where her great cousin was concerned. 
 
 Fra and Lyd, elevated to a passing height of 
 hope, dropped down into corresponding depths of 
 despair. The girls' mortification was intensified by 
 their having lost the sights which the Graf was 
 bound to go through the form of seeing, and by 
 their being forced to endure the discomfort of re- 
 mounting the ponies, and having them led down 
 through the slippery, stirred-up mire into which 
 the rain was fast turning the sandy tract of the 
 morning. Fra and Lyd were as susceptible to dis- 
 comfort, and raised as great an outcry over it, as 
 if they had been a couple of cockneys accustomed 
 only to pavement, with fiys, cabs, and omnibuses, 
 to rush to in every shower— or as if tliey had been 
 their own maids, and not squire's danghters whom 
 their father had expected to ' stand fire.' 
 
 Mr. Carteret was annoyed by Fra and Lyd's 
 behaviour, which did not often come before liis 
 eyes. Mrs. Carteret was annoyed that he should 
 be annoyed. 
 
 The gloom was really becoming infectious ; 
 Mary was fain to seek to check it, and to cheer
 
 BY THE ELBE. 317 
 
 herself. She had ah^eady told herself that what- 
 ever they had missed, they had seen beauty enough 
 to last them for months, and more than their grand- 
 mothers had seen in the course of their whole lives. 
 She now struck up a friendship, without a thought 
 of revenging herself on Taff Penryn, with Herr 
 Monch, who was a stout old soul, had not a fear 
 of rheumatism, and was very happy to have the 
 opportunity of discussing the last English book 
 which he had been reading with so gracious and 
 intelligent a young lady as Miss Carteret. 
 
 The book was not a recent publication. It 
 even struck Mary as being rather a juvenile study 
 for a famous chemist. It was the first series of 
 'The Tales of a Grandfather.' She had some 
 difficulty in keeping her countenance in the in- 
 fliction of the ' Bruss ' and ' Wallaice ' of Herr 
 Moncli's pronunciation. Still she could enter 
 heartily into the legends of Castle Dangerous and 
 the escapades of the Gudeman of Ballengeich, 
 which, after all, did not sound inappropriate in 
 this region of Eobber Knights' hurgs and of mad 
 Grafs — madder and idler, because utterly out of 
 season, than the maddest and idlest knight-errant 
 of them all. 
 
 The 'Tales of a Grandfather' lasted the 
 enthusiastic old gentleman and Mary, to the 
 exasperation of some of their auditors, all the 
 way down to Schandau ; and then, as Mary 
 lamented, she had to bear having her sound-
 
 318 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 minded, sound-hearted old man, worth a dozen of 
 the young men, torn away from her, for he was to 
 leave Schandau by the afternoon's train. And he 
 sought permission, without any objection raised, 
 to carry off his discomfited disciple, Taff Penryn, 
 in his train. 
 
 The end of the day was, that, as if to add 
 insult to injury in Fra's eyes, the party had no 
 sooner reached Schandau than the sky cleared and 
 the sun shone out again, sparkling on the thousands 
 of pearly drops which hung on every leaf of every 
 branch of the trees. 
 
 Era would have nothing to say to that sunlit 
 scene, she declined to look on its face. She retired 
 twice as sulkily as Taff Penryn, when an old 
 chemist would not talk chemistry on his holiday 
 to the young man — the ambition of whose life 
 was devouring him, so that he must catch at 
 straws, and fret feverishly when the straws 
 failed him. Fra retreated to her room, and wrote 
 up her correspondence, in which the Graf figiu'ed 
 largely, and was freely forgiven for his sins, great 
 and small. She led Lyd to the same employment ; 
 she even persuaded Gisela that she had caught a 
 bad cold, and must nurse herself for the remainder 
 of the day. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret was really tired, and in need of 
 the rest which she took reluctantly. There was 
 nobody left for Mary to walk about with, save her 
 father, but happily, as she said, who better could
 
 BY THE ELBE. 319 
 
 be left to lier ? Thus the two old friends at their 
 ease, and confidentially, as it were, ' got up ' 
 Schandau together thoroughly. 
 
 They strolled to the church in the middle of 
 the town, and found it built for strength rather 
 than beauty, with round bell tower and black spire, 
 extraordinary double porch, and leading to the 
 galleries, outer stairs, and outer doors, battered to 
 the last degree. Opposite the sacred building was 
 a large beech tree, with printed bills battered all 
 over the trunk. 
 
 They went as far as the httle white Bath-house, 
 with its station for the band which played tliere 
 every Sunday forenoon in summer. 
 
 They descended to the edge of the river and 
 watched the busy washerwomen rinsing the 
 clothes in the river, with the ferry boat, distin- 
 guished by its sharp red painted prow, and the 
 railway boat by its awning, successively cleaving 
 the water. 
 
 They traced the little river, with its many 
 bridges, flowing through the town, and among its 
 gardens, the water generally pure and bright, 
 though once the Carterets saw great sheep-skins 
 anchored in the current. 
 
 They wandered into the back settlements, and 
 found always the same delightful glimpses of 
 wooded heights and gleaming water, vine-covered 
 walls, boxes in the windows rich with double wall- 
 flower and stocks, to be succeeded by geraniums, 
 even cacti ; the same fat, fair-haired children play-
 
 320 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ing on the door steps, and sunburned women, 
 comely in spite of their toil, greeting them every- 
 where with a frank ' Guten Tag' 
 
 They returned to the Forst Haus garden and 
 terrace, where ladies were knitting or writing, and 
 gentlemen sketching or reading the newspapers 
 in little parties under the trees, though the mouth 
 was only April. 
 
 Mary sat long at her room window. She 
 picked out brilliant bits of colour in a woman 
 with a scarlet petticoat and a blue kerchief 
 over her head, carrying home a bundle of sticks 
 on her back. She said to herself this was 
 the place of perpetual motion, and that Taff 
 Penryn need not go further to seek it ; for not 
 only the great river flowed on for ever, but its 
 traffic Avas incessant. The ferry boats and rafts 
 were crossing continually with patient horses and 
 loads of goods. As many as thirty brawny work- 
 ing men carrying their tools, came over together, 
 hieing home from their work ; steamboats towed up 
 laden barges ; steamboats with passengers arrived 
 every hour. About the last swarmed the custom- 
 house officials, conspicuous by their yellow 
 buttons and the yellow bands round their cap, 
 empowered to examine the goods taken out of 
 Austria. Eailway engines on the opposite shore 
 steamed and shrieked day and night. 
 
 The sun, which had been inconstant during 
 the day, set with as steadfast a glory as on the
 
 BY THE ELBE. 321 
 
 previous night, behind the black rock wall of the 
 Lilienstein ; a light track from his splendour lin- 
 gered on the water, dying away in the protracted 
 ripple, while a soft misty blush rested on the 
 opposite hills. 
 
 Thus closed the holiday to Saxon Switzerland, 
 which was of some moment in Mary Carteret's 
 Hfe. 
 
 VOL. L
 
 322 BY TPIE ELBE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 WHAT WAS OWING TO A DEACONESS. 
 
 The trip, which had been in a great measure, after 
 the manner of trips, a failure to that portion of 
 the pleasure-seekers who had grown to build the 
 most extravagant hopes on its success, left a de- 
 sirable result, which they would have considered 
 worth any sacrifice, to Fra and Lyd. The Graf 
 Yon Felsberg, who, thanks to his good stars, was 
 not lost in the mist into which he had vanished, 
 became from that date a regular, as far as regu- 
 larity could be associated with him, visitor at Mr. 
 Carteret's house in the Blirgerwiese. Fra and 
 Lyd prided themselves immensely on this sequel ; 
 though it was not their circle which he specially 
 affected, and though he could not be said, save 
 for the eclat which attended him, to contribute 
 much to the enlivenment of any circle. He came 
 :abruptly, often at odd hours ; his manner was 
 brusque, though it was within the code of civilised 
 society ; he had little to say for himself, and per- 
 haps the best that could be said for his visits was 
 that they were always short.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 323 
 
 The fact was that the Graf Von Felsberg was 
 a dull young man, imprisoned in a crust of self- 
 conceit ; a cub — a lion's cub, if you w411 — only 
 partially licked. 
 
 If it had not been for his rich gilding and his 
 great vanity, which led him into extraordinary 
 pranks, he would have been nobody. True it was 
 also the fact that he was as brave as a lion, guile- 
 less and not unkindly, in spite of his rampant, un- 
 disciplined temper and self-will — for the ebullitions 
 of which among his other excesses, he was so far 
 left to himself as to take credit. But who cares for 
 a man simply because he is brave and honest, and 
 has some natural affection ? And it is not sufficient 
 to say that the Graf was cared for ; he was the 
 observed of all observers, the conquering hero, 
 the restive idol of the most select of the Dresden 
 drawing-rooms that season. 
 
 So far as the Carterets went, he found a divided 
 house. Mr. Carteret barely tolerated him ; Mrs. 
 Carteret was calmly civil to him as to any other 
 guest ; Mary was divided between an inclination 
 to gape and a desperate temptation to make game 
 of him, while at the same time she was grateful 
 to him for making the periods of his stay so brief, 
 because she was sure that it was an act of in- 
 voluntary consideration which saved her credit as 
 a well-bred woman and courteous entertainer of 
 the house's guests. 
 
 It was Era and Lyd who supplied the hero- 
 
 T 2
 
 324 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 worship ; they made up in quality for any defi- 
 ciency in quantity, going about on the days when 
 the Mad Graf so much as left his card at the door, 
 as if they had not only received an unapproach- 
 able boon, but had earned it by their own un- 
 equalled deserts. 
 
 Taff Penryn did not make the same acknow- 
 ledgment of his share in the excursion to Saxon 
 Switzerland, not even to apologise for what he 
 was sensible were his derelictions, since they were 
 committed in the good cause to which he had 
 devoted heart, brain, and life — past, present, and 
 to come, so far as he could command them. 
 
 At this epoch a friend took Mary to see the 
 Deaconess House in Bautzner Strasse. 
 
 The visitors were shown by one of the pleasant- 
 faced deaconesses, in the close white cap and wide 
 white collar of their indoor dress, over the whole 
 establishment. The inspection extended from the 
 homely chapel and great kitchen, with its huge 
 coppers, the sick children's and sick women's 
 rooms, with their infant and aged occupants, the 
 apothecary's room, where capable deaconesses are 
 taught to mix and dispense drugs, the dining-room, 
 where at the long tables groups of deaconesses 
 were socially drinking coffee — to the upper rooms, 
 where similar sisters worked sewing-machines, or 
 taught classes of pupils, or managed a creche of 
 healthy babies, and the recreation-room, with its 
 specially pleasant view into the spring garden, and
 
 BY THE ELBE. 325 
 
 where there are embroidery frames and pretty 
 work. It was all very busy, and yet at the same 
 time it had a stillness, which seemed to enter into 
 and quiet the spirit. 
 
 Mary was much interested in the life, and in 
 thinking what it must be to those women who 
 cast their lots into it from the ages of eighteen to 
 fifty years, who call the house in fondness their 
 Mother House, and who leave it rarely save to per- 
 form services of mercy or to found similar institu- 
 tions. She was not ignorant of the fact that while 
 no nun's irrevocable vow binds the deaconess, still, 
 as in the case of the Cathohc Sister of Charity, 
 the opinion even of the Protestant Church and of 
 society is decidedly against her lapng aside her 
 deaconess's hood and apron to assume the ordinary 
 bonnet and gown of an ordinary married woman. 
 The special dedication is regarded as broken, the 
 special education wasted, by the final absorption 
 into the common calling. 
 
 And here also, as in the case of the cloistered 
 nun, tlie clerical element plays a large part in the 
 economy. The pastor is even more potent than 
 the father confessor, in that he resides in the centre 
 of the establishment, and has its whole working 
 order constantly under his eye. But seeing that 
 he is a married man, with his wife, a sort of 
 mother of the deaconesses — and that in a family 
 home, with little children playing in the garden, 
 out of the trees of which the parsonage peeps,
 
 326 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 the influence is of a more natural and wholesome 
 kind. Indeed, Mary turned to that one primitive 
 little home in the middle of the larger, more 
 artificial institution, with a special sense of its 
 mingled strength and sweetness, as a great boon 
 to the whole community. 
 
 The survey ended with the Mag den Herberge^ 
 or the servants' quarters, where maid-servants can 
 come and stay day and night, and be taught their 
 duties, for threepence a day and their apprentice 
 work ; and the Gasthaus, where strangers can 
 lodge and board to inspect the system or to be 
 nursed in sickness. 
 
 It was a propos of this Gasthaus that the 
 sister who was conducting Mary and her friend 
 volunteered a communication to Mary. Sister 
 Hanna was not one of the hiojh-born deaconesses — 
 in the grave kindlmess of Avhose bearino- a certain 
 gentle stateliness is to be perceived. She was a 
 broad-faced, cheery Saxon peasant, with no ob- 
 jection to a little harmless gossip. 
 
 ' All our nursing is not done in the Gasthaus,' 
 she told the visitors ; ' we go out to every house in 
 the town when we are requested, and that is where- 
 ever there is serious sickness and the head of the 
 house is not a Catholic, in which case he employs a 
 Grey sister. In the time of the war there was the 
 Albrecht Verein, with its nurses, but it had only 
 a queen and not a pastor for its foundress and 
 lawgiver, and so it could not be expected to last.
 
 BY THE ELBE. 327 
 
 Ja wold the Queen, is very good, and so is the 
 King, though he, or his fathers for him, forsook the 
 reformed faith and severed himself from his people, 
 and that was a great misfortune. But nobody 
 denies that he has been a great captain in the war, 
 and that the Queen laboured from morning till 
 night with the bandages and the drugs of her 
 Albrecht Verein — though she does get the fashions 
 from France, which goes against the grain with us 
 honest Germans. Still, they are but a king and 
 queen, after all ; not like a blessed pastor 
 Fliedner. However, it does not matter whether 
 the nurses are blue or grey, for the welcome 
 they get in the houses when they are wanted. 
 It is quite a holiday, like w^hat Finsen used to 
 be in om* village, what with the attention and the 
 gifts I get for the House when I go out to take a 
 turn at nursing. It is " Sister Hanna, what will you 
 be persuaded to eat or drink ? Shall it be quark- 
 kucfien ot peroggenf" "What would you like best 
 as a thank-offering, Sister Hanna ? " " No, we will 
 not allow you to wear yourself out ; you will rest, 
 and just sing us one of your evening hymns," all 
 day long. Were it not for the suffering of the poor 
 sick, it would be too heavenly for a sinful woman 
 in this world.' 
 
 It was at this stage of the conversation, or 
 rather monologue, that the sister turned quickly to 
 Mary, and said, ' Ach^ I was waiting upon one of
 
 o 
 
 28 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 your countrymen, the last time I was out. He was 
 English, though he had been born in Germany he 
 told me, and had fought for Germany — he spoke 
 German — my gracious young lady, he spoke the 
 beautiful German, not this speech of peasant's 
 German, like me, or hke our doctor, or our pastor, 
 but as Pastor Fhedner himself might have spoken.' 
 
 Mary pricked her ears, and asked, in her best 
 German, where Sister Hanna had nursed this 
 Enghshman who spoke German with the per- 
 fection which the excellent Pastor Fliedner might 
 have shown in that as in other attainments. 
 
 ' At the Pension of Friiulein Korner,' Sister 
 Hanna replied, and Mary's suspicion was made a 
 certainty. She had but to put further questions to 
 reheve her thrill of anxiety, whether it were the 
 typhus, that scourge of German towns, or brain 
 fever bred of his infatuation, which had prostrated 
 Taff Penryn, and to drive away the cold shiver with 
 which she reflected in a flash of recollection, that 
 though Sister Hanna had been speaking with sa- 
 tisfaction rather than regret of her accomplished 
 patient, it was with much the same serenity that 
 she had talked a few minutes previously of a Herr 
 Ober Jdger, who had arrived to die peacefully in 
 the Gasthaus. The truth was that famiharity had 
 robbed death-beds of all terror to Sister Hanna ; 
 and the blessedness of the dead who had given 
 the faintest hope of repentance or of devout 
 practice was so assured to her unquestioning, san-
 
 BY THE ELBE. 329 
 
 guine soul, that slie was apt to regard them as 
 very much better off then the hving who were 
 still in a state of probation, subject to sin, loss, and 
 pain. 
 
 ' He had been playing tricks, this young Herr 
 Baron.' ' No,' explained the sister, responding to 
 an exclamation of Mary's ; ' he was not a baron, 
 truly. So ! did you think it ? ' and she laughed 
 at the mistake. ' But I always said he should have 
 been — he was so lordly, and yet so homely in his 
 ways, like my young Herr Baron, whom my blessed 
 mother nursed up at the castle in the old days ; 
 and so I called this young English Herr — the 
 Herr Baron. He had been playing tricks, but not 
 because he was wild like other young men, poor 
 foolish fellows, but because he was so clever, 
 though he had not a grey hair in his blonde 
 beard — blonde ! it is a kindkopf beard and all — but 
 inside, it is like the head of my cousin the school- 
 master, or like the shopkeeper of our village, who 
 is a real Doctor Faustus, always full of contrivances 
 and inventions to keep away the wasps from his 
 treacle, and to put the bacon through nettle 
 smoke, so that the files will be stung as they 
 attempt to settle upon it. I do not know that 
 my Herr Baron's tricks were so useful. But what 
 does he do, after burning the whole of the 
 Fraulein's stock of wood, which should have lasted 
 for cooking till summer, in his own stove, and 
 shattering lamp-glasses and pipkins till she
 
 330 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 thought that he would shatter the walls of the 
 house about her and the rest of the boarders ? 
 She would have begged him to find another 
 pension, only she is right good-hearted, Fraulein 
 Korner, and she had a liking for this boarder. 
 She thought if he did all this mischief in her house, 
 where he was looked after, he would make away 
 with himself, out and out — what with his experi- 
 ments, and his being a single man without father, 
 mother or relative — in another house, where he 
 might not be seen to. And what does he do next?' 
 
 ' What does he do ? ' repeated Mary, quickly. 
 
 ' Mein Fraulein, he takes to breaking wood 
 in his shirt sleeves, sawing, and hammering, 
 filling his room with noise and shavings, and with 
 not a fagot, shelf, or stool to show for it — 
 only some rude toys, which a child would hardly 
 look at on Christmas eve. And as my gentleman 
 was acting the carpenter, not being used to tools, 
 he let the hatchet shp on his thigh. There was 
 an artery cut, and there might have been lock- 
 jaw. I can tell you he had fainted from loss of 
 blood, though he is a strong young man, and the 
 Fraulein was at her wits' end before the doctor 
 and I reached the house.' 
 
 ' But he has recovered from the injury, and 
 there has been no lock-jaw,' urged Mary. 
 
 ' He has recovered this time,' nodded Sister 
 Hanna, ' but he'll chop off his head or blow it 
 clean off his shoulders on the next occasion ; for
 
 BY THE ELBE. 331 
 
 the Herr Baron, just because he is so like a Herr 
 Baron, is not one whit daunted. He would not 
 say that he was sorry for what he had brought 
 upon himself, he would not promise not to do it 
 again, not for the Fraulein, or me, or the doctor, 
 not for all the treasures which lie under the moun- 
 tains. Still, I confess I had a favour for my patient, 
 who was a true soldier as well as a Herr Baron. 
 He called that ugly cut nothing to the gun-shot 
 and sabre wounds he had seen ; and he was so 
 helpful to himself, so reluctant to give trouble — 
 I am sure I cannot tell whether that belonged 
 to his character as a nobleman or a soldier. 
 I^either was he at all sorry for himself — quite the 
 contrary — he saw his way to what he wished, he 
 believed, and his hand would not slip when he 
 tried again. And so he would laugh and read, 
 when you could not hear his voice above a 
 whisper, if we would let him have his books and 
 papers ; or he would chat with his friends — he 
 had many friends — as happy as a king.' 
 
 ' I know him,' said Mary ; ' he is very clever 
 and good and obstinate, as you say.' 
 
 Mary carried to her father the tidings of the 
 accident which had befallen Taff Penryn. She 
 recounted it in the words of the deaconess. It 
 never struck her that there was any sting in them 
 to the elder man till she came to Sister Hanna's 
 random remark, that her patient ' should have 
 been a Herr Baron.'
 
 332 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 ' That was a chance hit,' said Mr. Carteret, in 
 the middle of his curiosity and genuine concern. 
 
 ' How ? ' said Mary, uncertain what he meant. 
 * Oh ! because you could not help his father being 
 a just man in the matter of my grandaunt Sophia's 
 disposal of the Warren. But it would not have 
 signified, so far as they are concerned, had the 
 Penryns taken the Warren ; it would have been 
 melted in crucibles or planed into saw-dust so 
 soon as TafF Penryn came of age.' 
 
 ' You cannot tell ; it might have given another 
 and a more rational bent to his fancies. I can 
 remember when the fact that agricultural chemistry 
 was to put new life and power into the earth, and 
 to make it answer to every touch, had a great 
 charm for me, though it did not prosper in my 
 hands. But that is not the question. To have 
 been temporarily injured and disabled may have 
 done the fellow some good, though, unfortunately, 
 his nurse describes him as hardened under his 
 cross. People used to say that there was nothing 
 for hot blood like letting out a drop or two ; in 
 the same manner there was no cure of a boy's 
 mania for the sea equal to sending him to undergo 
 the petty hardships of even a prosperous voyage.' 
 
 ' And you think,' said Mary, sceptically, ' that 
 the sharpest accident — the recurrence of which, 
 at the same time, he can easily provide against, 
 will stop TafF Penryn in his self-chosen career as 
 an inventor?'
 
 BY THE ELBE. 33S 
 
 ' I suppose I think that a burnt child, however 
 superficially burnt, ought to dread the fire which 
 he has been scandalously provoking,' said Mr. 
 Carteret; 'and, Mary, don't seek to deprive me 
 of the very slender hope and hold which this mis- 
 adventure gives me over Penryn.' 
 
 But Mr. Carteret returned from the special 
 visit which he had made to Fraulein Korner's 
 pension for the purpose of solemnly condoling 
 with Taff Penryn, and making the accident a text 
 for a sermon, and announced that his slender hope 
 was annihilated. ' He is not one whit discomfited ; 
 he is cockier in his craze than ever. In place of 
 being ashamed of the idiotic cause of having been 
 within half an inch of losing his life — for the 
 accident had been serious— I happened to meet 
 the doctor, and he told me that the artery was 
 just taken up in time — the fellow is as white as 
 a ghost yet, and cannot walk across the room 
 without a stick — he is as inclined to exult over 
 the wound as if it had been got in one of their 
 battles. He said something of the necessary 
 training, and of the scars, which were honourable 
 in any field, but doubly honourable on the field of 
 peace and progress ; and that no leader should 
 expect, or hope, to be without his scars far more 
 indelible than this scratch of his. I said, did he 
 mean that he was at liberty to hazard his life for 
 a crotchet? Not for a crotchet, he answered, 
 coolly ; but for the least of the long train of dis-
 
 334 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 coveries which should culminate in man's triumph 
 over nature, he was not only at liberty to hazard 
 his life, but to lay it down gladly. He had perfect 
 faith that the Great Giver, who bade man go forth 
 and possess the earth, would think a life well 
 bestowed in bringing the race nearer to its inheri- 
 tance. In short, he considers himself quite 
 warranted in poisoning his blood or paralysing 
 his nerves for a scientific whim any day.' 
 
 ' In chopping off his head or blowing it ofi" his 
 shoulders, as Sister Hanna expressed it. But, 
 papa, is there not something in this of the tone of 
 a hero and martyr of science ? ' 
 
 ' Pshaw ! Mary,' exclaimed her father, im- 
 patiently ; ' don't degrade the epithets. To have 
 heroism and martyrdom you must have a cause 
 worthy of the words. You don't call hero and 
 martyr the poor fool and dupe who imagines he 
 can fly, and whose sham wings bring him in 
 violent and deadly contact with the ground at his 
 feet, if there be grinning brutes to permit the 
 preposterous experiment ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know what I call him, I know what 
 I call the grinning brutes. But, papa, where and 
 how is one to draw the line ? You admit that you 
 yourself were among the students who sought 
 marvels and miracles in agricultural chemistry.' 
 
 ' Child, tangible results rewarded the very first 
 investigation ; but when in the course of centuries 
 none has appeared to repay the most arduous
 
 BY THE ELBE. 335 
 
 researches, what do you make of the hah^-brained 
 enthusiast who still expects an answer in the 
 affirmative ? ' 
 
 ' I make of him the last solitary leader of a 
 forlorn hope,' said Mary, with a shake of the head, 
 but a rising flush in the cheek ; ' like the last of 
 the ancient mariners who will sail in quest of the 
 :N"orth Pole.' 
 
 ' Eather, since there happens to be what stands 
 for a North Pole in natural philosophy, while there 
 is no such fantastic dream as perpetual motion,' 
 corrected her father, ' like the thistle-headed ad- 
 venturers who made the Eldorado their goal.' 
 
 ' Thistle-headed ! ' protested Mary, indignantly. 
 
 * Ealeigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert ! ' 
 
 ' Well, if they had waited and tried it in this 
 nineteenth century, assuredly thistle-headed would 
 have been a mild term for them,' said Mr. Car- 
 teret, a little conscience-stricken. 
 
 ' Papa,' said Mary, half gaily, half pathetically, 
 
 * you asked me to spare you a grain of hope in 
 arresting TafT Penryn by a nearly-healed cut in 
 the thigh ; will you leave me my leader of a for- 
 lorn hope, my one believing dreamer and daring 
 investigator of the unknown ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly ; but madmen more or less learned 
 have not ceased on the earth. You may reckon 
 the editor of " Zadkiel's Almanac " among them, 
 though you have not the pleasure of his acquaint- 
 ance. Does your forlorn leader go in for astro-
 
 336 BY THE ELBE. 
 
 logy, after the ftishion of Dr. Dee and Cornelius 
 Agrippa ? ' 
 
 ' I do not know — no, I should say decidedly, 
 no. Don't you remember he has had a German 
 education, and goes in for the laborious verifica- 
 tion of every fact in nature, in the middle of what 
 you regard as his mysticism ? ' 
 
 ' Any way, you are welcome to my share of 
 the acquaintance, since I can make nothing of it. 
 Perliaps your womanish romance, with its wonder- 
 ing credulity, may flatter or soothe his diseased 
 brain into submitting to human restrictions. I 
 am going to send your mother and you to make the 
 acquaintance of Fraulein Korner. She seems to 
 me a very good sort of woman, and I wish her to 
 see that this young fool is not absolutely without 
 friends. I must show her that, as old neighbours 
 of his people, we are indebted to her for her care 
 of him. I would do as much as that, I hope, for 
 still more culpable young fools, both among our 
 countrymen and our entertainers,' said Mr. Car- 
 teret, thinking while he spoke of the trouble he 
 had lately taken to extricate a young Enghshman 
 and a young German from a dubious betting 
 transaction at the club, ' at least, I owe the little 
 I can do to TafFPenryn's son.' 
 
 END OF THE FIEST VOLUME. 
 
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